Looks like blood... tastes like awesome.

When Betsy and I took our honeymoon to Italy, we stayed a few nights at this quaint little farm in Tuscany. It was a cute town and just very relaxing.

The farm owners would have wine tastings and snacks every day and one day they brought out this homemade stuff called “Mosto Cotto” that they served with hard cheese.

Betsy and I actually brought some back from Italy and enjoyed it later on a date night.

Since then, it has been in the back of my mind to try and recreate the stuff. So this is my version!

I took one shortcut which I will acknowledge is most definitely cheating, but it still turned out pretty awesome.

Red Wine Syrup

Yield: 1.5 cups

Prep Time: 45 minutes

Total Time: 2 hours

Ingredients:

3 cups full-bodied red wine
1 1/4 cups sugar
1/2 teaspoon guar gum + 2 tablespoons sugar
1 pound hard cheese (pecorino is good), cubed for dipping

Directions:

1) Add sugar and red wine to a pot and bring to a simmer. Simmer, stirring regularly for about 30 minutes over medium-low heat.

2) In a small bowl, whisk together guar gum with some sugar.

3) While vigorously whisking syrup, slowly add guar gum mixture. Whisk the syrup constantly for 5 minutes until guar gum is well dissolved.

4) Continue to simmer for another 5-10 minutes until the mixture is very thick. When foam or bubbles form, they should stay at he surface briefly even if you remove the pot from the heat.

5) Remove the syrup from the heat and let cool for a few minutes. Once it's cooled slightly, transfer to a bowl and allow to cool slowly.

6) If you notice that the syrup is getting to thick and starts to actually gel, stir in another tablespoon of red wine to loosen it up.

7) Once syrup is thick and room temperature, pour it over hard cheese or dip cheese in the syrup.

Boiling Wine

I remember asking the farm owner in Italy how they made the Mosto Cotto that we loved so much. From what I could tell, this is how they did it:

1) Take a huge amount of red wine – like gallons.
2) Boil it for about a day, stirring it regularly.
3) Bottle it

The problem is that the wine has to reduce so much to make a syrup that if you just did one bottle, you would simmer it for hours and hours and be left with maybe 1/2 cup of syrup.

And come on… who wants to stir something for a day? Not this guy!

So I upped my ingredient list from one to three.

At first I felt dirty about this, but later on, as I was enjoying my awesome red wine syrup, I became comfortable with the scandal.

Sugar and wine basically.

GUAR!

This stuff is not named after the sweet metal band. It is named after a simple legume that has some pretty amazing powers.

It turns out that guar is some of the most powerful natural thickener around. It’s crazy how little you have to use to get some serious thickening. You can find this stuff in most grocery stores these days. I found this bag in my normal everyday grocery store. You can also order it online.

Crazy stuff.

Starting the Boil

While you could just basically add the guar to the wine and have instant syrup, I still wanted to boil it for a bit just to melt some sugar in it and also boil off most of the alcohol.

So just add the sugar and wine to a pot and bring it to a simmer.

Red red wine!

I recommend cooking this on medium-low heat for about 30 minutes to cook off the booze and also dissolve the sugar completely.

It won’t be even close to thick enough to make a syrup at this point though.

Like I said, you could continue simmering it and it would probably take 90 minutes to boil it all the way down, but you would be left with very little syrup.

Just a quick simmer...

Adding the Guar

Adding the guar gum to the liquid is actually a bit tricky. This stuff is so powerful that if you where to just add it in its pure form, it would gel to itself and just form annoying little balls that would forever live in your syrup.

That is not ideal.

The way to avoid this is to mix the guar with some sugar to thin it out a bit. You can then add this mixture to the syrup without worry.

Doesn't take much.

When you’re adding the guar, whisk the syrup constantly and add the sugar/guar mixture in a slow stream.

Keep stirring and whisking like crazy once the guar is added so it dissolves completely. It will look like a ridiculously small amount of guar for this amount of liquid, but trust me… it’s more than enough.

After about five minutes of simmering, you’ll notice that your mixture starts to thicken quickly. It’s done is when bubbles form on the surface that stay on the surface. Even if you remove the pot from the heat, the bubbles will stay for a few seconds meaning that the syrup is pretty thick.

Sturdy bubbles.

Cool it Down

Add the syrup to a small bowl or dish and let it slowly start to cool down to room temperature.

Quick Tip: Wash your cooking pot immediately! Any syrup that’s left in the pan will pretty much solidify on it and be very hard to clean off once it has cooled.

Meanwhile your syrup will continue to thicken…

Really thick!

Too Thick!

Guar gum is hard stuff to work with because it’s so powerful. It’s like trying to mow your lawn with napalm. It’ll work, but probably too well.

As your syrup cools, if you notice that it’s getting too thick and starting to gel into a solid, stir in a tablespoon or two of fresh red wine and that will loosen it up. I had to do this with mine because I was worried that it was getting too thick.

I really loved my finished texture though. It was smooth and silky, but still pretty thick. It would stick to stuff easily.

Yum.

What to Dip?

This syrup is good on lots of things in my mind: ice cream, some sort of brownie, maybe even pancakes!

I just did one thing with it though… I dipped hard cheese in it which is what we learned to do with the Italian stuff.

Any hard cheese is good.

This is a really fun appetizer and people will gobble it up. Just cube up some cheese and drizzle on a good amount of the syrup.

Really good!

Like I said though, I think this syrup has more applications than just cheese. It’s slightly tangy and sweet and just has a really unique and awesome flavor.

Guar gum is fun. I think I’ll keep experimenting with it since they sell it in huge bags compared to how much you would ever use.

Anybody used guar gum before?

What did you do with it?

The space in sweet bread is important.

A space has never been so important in a food name. Sweet bread is vastly different than sweetbread.

Sweetbread, of course, being the thymus gland of an animal (delicious in Po Boys) and sweet bread being an actual loaf of bread that happens to be sweet.

It can be confusing in writing, but it’s much more confusing in speech.

A recent conversation I had with Betsy:

Bets: What are you cooking today?

Nick: Sweet bread.

Bets: Awesome! My favorite. I can’t wait to try it!

Many hours later…

Bets: I thought you said you were make sweetbreads?!

Nick: Sorry. I should’ve been more specific. I was making sweet space bread.

It turns out though that sweet bread is also a wonderfully delicious thing and one that I’d never made before it won the poll last week. I was really happy with how it turned out!

Portuguese Sweet Bread

Yield: 2 loaves

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Total Time: 6 hours

Ingredients:

Starter:
1/2 Cup bread flour
1 Tablespoon sugar
2.25 Teaspoons instant yeast
1/2 Cup water

Dough:
6 Tablespoons sugar
1 Teaspoon salt
1/4 Cup powdered milk
4 Tablespoons unsalted butter
2 Large eggs
1 Teaspoon lemon (or almond) extract
1 Teaspoon orange extract
1 Teaspoon vanilla extract
3 Cups bread flour
6 Tablespoons water, room temperature

Egg Wash:
1 Egg, whisked with 1 Teaspoon water

Helpful Equipment:
Stand Mixer

Directions:

1) Start sponge by mixing starter ingredients in a medium bowl. Stir until it makes a smooth batter. Cover and let sit at room temperature for 60-90 minutes, until the sponge is very foamy.

2) To make dough, combine sugar, salt, powdered milk, and butter in large bowl or with a paddle attachment in a stand mixer. Combine until smooth.

3) Mix in eggs, one at a time, and extracts.

4) Mix in the sponge and flour and switch to the dough hook. Mix on medium with the dough hook until the dough is very supple and soft. If it is at all wet or sticky add more flour by the spoonful. Alternatively, you can knead by hand on a floured surface until the desired consistency is reached. This will take 10-12 minutes with a mixer or 15-16 minutes by hand.

5) Add dough ball to a lightly greased bowl, cover and let ferment until it doubles in size, about 2 hours.

6) Remove dough from bowl and divide into two pieces. Form each piece into a tight round ball (a boule). Lightly oil two 9-inch pie pans and place one boule in each pan, seam side down. Cover loosely and let rise for another 2-3 hours, until the dough doubles in size.

7) Brush loaves with egg wash.

8) Bake loaves at 350 degrees for 50-60 minutes until they are a deep brown and sound slightly hollow when thumped.

9) Remove from the oven and let cool on wire racks. Let cool for at least 45 minutes before slicing.

Adapted from The Bread Baker's Apprentice.

Making the Starter

Like a lot of real bread recipes, this loaf involves a starter. Don’t worry, this particular starter is really easy and doesn’t take days to make. You just need a few ingredients.

The basics.

Mix these all together with some water and let it ferment for 60-90 minutes until it gets nice and foamy. This also has the added benefit of making sure your yeast is nice and lively.

After the rise time, it should be really foamy and on the verge of collapse.

It's alive!

Making the Dough

If there is one book for which I’m very afraid to alter the recipes, it’s The Bread Baker’s Apprentice. The recipes are so specific that I just always feel like I’m committing some sort of cardinal sin if I change them.

So I feel obligated to disclose two changes that I made to this recipe. One I made on purpose and one I made on accident. Neither change made for a bad loaf.

First, I used 4 tablespoons of butter in my recipe while the original recipe called for 2 tablespoons of butter and 2 tablespoons of vegetable shortening. I made this change on purpose because I didn’t have any vegetable shortening!

Second, the original recipe called for lemon extract but I used almond extract in my version. The only reason I made this change is because I apparently cannot read.

Regardless, the one ingredient in this recipe that Mr. Reinhart says you 100% cannot substitute is powdered milk. I get that. It gives the final loaf a very specific flavor and texture. It’s not really negotiable.

Powdered milk is apparently important.

To start the dough, add the butter (or butter and shortening if you’re using both) to a bowl with the salt, sugar, and powdered milk and kind of work them together with a large spoon.

You could also add them to a stand mixer and beat them with a paddle attachment. You basically want to cream them together and I did kind of a piss poor job of it. Ideally, it would be one creamy texture.

Not my best job...

Anyway, then add your eggs one at a time, and the extracts and continue to mix.

Once all that is mixed together, add your starter that has been foaming away along with your bread flour and water.

That starter is cool stuff.

While you can definitely make this recipe with a stand mixer, I went ahead and made it by hand just to be different.

If you do use a mixer, switch to the dough hook after you get your ingredients together and stir it on medium for 10-12 minutes until the dough ball is a nice, soft texture.

If you’re doing it by hand, stir everything together until you get a rough ball. Something kind of like this…

Dough?

Scoop this out onto a lightly floured counter and start kneading! Here’s the bad news… this will take 15-16 minutes depending on your kneading skills. If the dough gets sticky at any point, knead in another spoonful of flour.

The resulting dough ball should be very smooth and soft and easy to work with.

Once you get it there, add it to a lightly oiled bowl so it can rise!

Dough!

The First Rising

Let the dough rise until it about doubles in size. This should take about two hours. This dough is incredibly soft and easy to work with. It actually reminded me of doughnut dough…

Doubling is about right.

A Strange Step

I was a bit confused about the next step. Actually, I’m still confused by it so I shoudln’t use past tense. The recipe calls to divide the dough into two even pieces and form loaves of dough. Makes sense, but then it says to add those boules to lightly greased pie pans.

I’m completely at a loss as to why you have to bake these in pie pans, but here it goes.

No idea why pie pans are needed.

The Second Rising

Once you’ve put your dough balls into the pie pans (seriously you can just use sheet pans as far as I can tell), cover them loosely and let them rise a second time.

Again, they should double in size which will take another 2 hours or so.

Then brush each loaf with a light coat of the egg wash.

For a nice brown crust...

Baking and Cooling

Bake these guys at 350 degrees for about 50-60 minutes.

After about 30 minutes they will start to get very browned. Have no fear. They won’t burn. Just let them keep cooking until the full 50-60 minutes is up. They should sound slightly hollow when thumped when they are done. If you’re in doubt, let them bake for another 5 minutes.

When you pull them out, let them cool on a wire rack. These are really pretty!

Pretty things!

I loved the crust on these loaves. After you let them cool for about 45 minutes, you can slice into them to reveal a nice crust and a very soft crumb which is awesome.

Makes great toast!

As you might guess, the dough is slightly sweet but also has great flavor from all the different extracts.

This bread is great on its own with some butter but is also good as toast with a dab of Nutella.

I hadn’t made a good loaf of bread in awhile so I was really happy with how these turned out!

Millions of cinnamon rolls!

You know you’re a food blogger when…

1) You are used to eating meals at room temperature because you had to spend 10 minutes photographing the darn thing.

2) You have the grocery store aisles memorized.

3) You bring baked goods to bars during happy hour just so you can get them out of the house.

Number three is exactly what happened with this delicious thing. I made it, photographed it, ate more of it than I should have and then rushed out the door to catch a beer with some friends.

I was about to leave when I decided… what the heck… let’s bring it to the bar! This was a good idea. People loved it because the tiny little rolls are bite-sized. Even our server snuck a few pieces!

While I was going to write that this recipe is really great for brunches, it also happens to be perfect for bars.

Chocolate Chip Monkey Bread

Yield: Serves 10.

Prep Time: 30 minutes + rise time

Total Time: 4 hours

Ingredients:

Dough:
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1 cup milk, warm
1/3 cup water, warm
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 tablespoon instant yeast
3.25 cups all-purpose flour, plus extra for rolling
2 teaspoons salt
3 ounces semi-sweet chocolate chips (opt.)

1-2 tablespoons butter, soft for bundt pan.
1 teaspoon vegetable oil, for rising

Brown Sugar Coating:
1 cup brown sugar
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
8 tablespoons unsalted butter , melted

Glaze:
1 cup powdered sugar
2 tablespoons milk

Helpful Equipment:
Bundt Pan

Directions:

1) Butter pan with 2 tablespoons softened butter and set aside for later.

2) In a large bowl, mix together milk, water, melted butter, sugar and yeast. Meanwhile, mix flour and salt in standing mixer fitted with dough hook. Turn machine to low and slowly add milk mixture. After dough comes together, increase speed to medium and mix until dough is shiny and smooth, 6 to 7 minutes. If at any point dough is very sticky, add more flour by the tablespoon.

If you don't have a mixer, just mix the ingredients in a bowl with a wooden spoon until the dough forms a rough ball. Then turn out onto a floured surface and knead the dough until it forms a smooth ball, about 5-6 minutes.

3)Turn dough onto lightly floured counter and knead briefly to form smooth, round ball. Coat large bowl with vegetable oil or nonstick spray. Place dough in bowl and coat surface of dough. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and let rise until dough doubles in size, about an hour.

4) For the sugar mixture, mix brown sugar and cinnamon together in a bowl. Place melted butter in second bowl.

5) To finish bread, remove the dough from the bowl, and pat into a rough 10-inch square. Sprinkle chocolate chips on half of the dough and fold it over. Then roll out again to a square. Using a bench scraper or knife, cut dough into tiny 1/4-1/2 inch pieces.

6) Roll each piece into a rough ball and dip into the melted butter, allowing excess butter to drip back into the bowl. Roll in the brown sugar mixture, then layer balls in the Bundt pan. Try to stagger the balls so they form a single thing.

7) Cover the Bundt pan tightly with plastic wrap and let rise for another hour until the balls are about 2 inches from the top of the pan.

8) Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Unwrap the pan and bake until the top is deep brown, about 35-40 minutes. Cool in the pan for 5 minutes, then turn out onto a late and allow to cool slightly, about 10 minutes.

9) While the bread cools, whisk the confectioners’ sugar and milk in a small bowl until the lumps are gone. Using a spoon, drizzle the glaze over the monkey bread. Serve warm.

Adapted from a Brown Eyed Baker recipe.

The Dough

This dough is basically a cinnamon roll dough. It’s pretty much the easiest kind of dough to work with in my opinion. It’s really easy to mix and knead. It’s very soft and stretchy. It’s really easy to roll out and shape!

Start it by mixing all the dough ingredients except the salt and flour in a small bowl. Stir them together and let them sit for a minute or two to make sure the yeast is dissolved and active. It should start foaming a bit.

In a mixing bowl, combine your salt and flour and add in the liquid stuff. If you have a stand mixer, just mix this all together with the dough hook on low-medium speed until it comes together in a soft ball, about 5 minutes.

This is a really easy dough to make without a mixer though. Just stir the ingredients together with a wooden spoon and once they are all together, knead the dough on a floured surface until it’s a nice smooth and soft ball.

Mixer or no mixer, if the dough ever gets sticky, add more flour.

Pretty straightforward

Once your dough ball is formed, add it to a bowl that’s been lightly oiled. I just used some vegetable oil and coated the inside of the bowl. Turn the dough ball over in the bowl so it gets nice and coated and then cover the dough and let it rise for about an hour. It should double in size.

This was my finished dough ball.

After a short rise.

Making the Balls

Now for the fun part. Scoop the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and roll it out into a large square. Then sprinkle your chocolate chips on half of the square.

The chocolate is optional, but I thought it worked perfectly in the recipe. You can use almost any chocolate chip. I just used some semi-sweet chips that I had in my pantry.

You only need a few ounces to get some nice chocolate flavor.

No need to go crazy with chocolate.

Fold the dough over and pack it down so the chocolate chips are more or less enclosed in dough.

Folded and lightly rolled.

Then use a knife or a dough scraper to chop up the dough into bite-sized pieces. You should shoot for 60-70 little pieces. About 1/2 inch squares is a good goal.

It’s actually good to have different sizes though so don’t worry about them all being totally even.

Approximately a million.

Filling the Pan

In a small bowl, mix together the brown sugar and cinnamon. Also use a separate small bowl and gently melt some butter in the microwave.

Working with a few pieces of dough at a time, roll them into rough balls and dunk them in the melted butter.

No substitutions here...

Then toss them in the sugar and cinnamon mixture and roll them around. A light coating is all you need.

Like an inside out cinnamon roll

Then toss the finished balls in a bundt pan that has been pretty heavily buttered.

Keep going until you use all your dough. If you have a normal sized pan you’ll probably about half fill the pan which is perfect.

About half full is good.

If you don’t have a bundt pan, I don’t see why you couldn’t make this in a normal baking dish. It might not be quite as attractive, but it would still be delicious.

Regardless of the pan you choose, after you finish stacking all the balls of dough, cover the pan and let them rise a second time. About another hour should give you a great puffy dough.

While it might not look like these have risen much, keep in mind that they are also expanding to fill a bunch of little cracks that are in between all the dough balls. This second rise is really important.

A longer second rise.

Baking and Glazing

Once your dough has risen a second time, bake them at 350 degrees for about 35-40 minutes. They should be a nice golden brown and you might also notice some brown sugar bubbling up around the edges. That means it’s done!

This was my finished bread and it not only looked great, it smelled amazing!

Hello beautiful.

Let this cool in the pan for a few minutes and then invert it on a plate or platter.

Meanwhile, just stir together the powdered sugar and milk to make a very simple glaze.

Once the bread has cooled for 10 minutes or so, go ahead and drizzle the glaze all over it.

A simple glaze.

You could slice this, but I actually preferred serving it with toothpicks so people can just pick off the bread piece that they want.

Some people prefer the outer ones that get kind of crispy. Some like the inside ones that are soft.

So good!

For the delicious and show-stopping dessert that is produced, this thing really isn’t that hard to make. The dough is really easy to bring together and then it’s just a matter of rolling it, dunking it in butter and sugar and baking it.

In other words, you make do this. Anyone can make this.

And everyone should.

The crumb is awesome.

If I were to tell you that size matters, you would probably think I was telling an inappropriate joke.

On any other day, you would be correct.

But on this day, I’m talking about coffee cake. And size definitely matters when it comes to coffee cake.

Not the size of the cake actually, but the size of crumb.

Let’s face it, the best part of any coffee cake is the brown sugar laced, slightly crunchy crumb that tops the cake. That’s why coffee cake exists. So why not go big on it? Why not pile on heaps of the stuff?

Why not indeed. And that’s what this coffee cake includes: A big thick layer of nothing but crumb.

Blackberry Big Crumb Coffee Cake

Yield: Serves 6-8.

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Total Time: 1 hour 30 minutes

Ingredients:

For Filling:
1 pint blackberries, washed and halved
1/4 cup sugar
1 tablespoon corn starch

For the Big Crumbs:
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon crystallized ginger, mashed
1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted
1 3/4 cups cake flour
A pinch of salt

Cake:
1/3 cup sour cream
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup cake flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons butter, cut into pieces and softened

Helpful Equipment:
Stand Mixer or Hand Mixer

Directions:

1) Preheat oven to 325 degrees

2) Butter an 8-inch-square baking pan.

3) For filling, slice blackberries in half and toss with sugar and cornstarch. Set aside.

4) To make crumbs, in a large bowl, whisk together sugars, spices, salt and butter until smooth. Stir in flour with a spatula. It will be a solid dough.

5) To prepare cake, in a small bowl, stir together the sour cream, egg, egg yolk and vanilla.

6) In a separate mixing bowl, stir together flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Add butter and a spoonful of sour cream mixture and mix on medium speed with a hand mixer or stand mixer until flour is moistened. Increase speed and beat for 30 seconds. Add remaining sour cream mixture in two batches, beating for 20 seconds after each addition, and scraping down the sides of bowl with a spatula.

7) Scoop out about 1/2 cup batter and set aside.

8) Scrape remaining batter into prepared pan. Spoon blackberries over batter. Dollop set-aside batter over blackberries; no need for it to be even.

9) Using your fingers, break topping mixture into big crumbs, about 1/2 inch to 3/4 inch in size. They do not have to be uniform, but make sure most are around that size. Sprinkle over cake.

10) Bake cake until a toothpick inserted into center comes out clean of batter (it might be moist from blackberries), about an hour to an hour and 15 minutes. Cool before serving.

Adapted from a NY Times recipe.

Berry Berry Good

There’s a fair amount of ingredients in this bad boy, but there are lots of duplicates so it isn’t too bad really. There’s three basic parts to the cake and we’ll make them all separately and then pile them all together: The cake, the berry filling, and the big crumb topping.

Let’s start with the filling. I went with blackberries, but you could use any berry I think.

Pretty things.

Assuming you do you blackberries, I recommend chopping them in half just because they can be a bit large.

Then just mix them in a bowl with the other filling ingredients. Filling is done!

I worried that the filling would be too watery, but it turned out fine.

I was worried about this, but it worked great.

Crumb Time

This is a great recipe for crumb. It’s nice and thick and produces big chunks of crunchy and sweet topping. It’s a keeper for sure.

The one ingredient that you may not have used before is crystallized ginger. It gives the crumb a really light ginger flavor which is amazing. If you can’t find it though, don’t worry about it. It’s not essential to the recipe.

One of my favorite ingredients.

If you use the crystallized ginger, be sure to chop it up really finely. The stuff is pretty strong and you wouldn’t want someone to bite into a big nugget of it.

Combine that with all the other crumb ingredients (except the flour) in a large bowl. Once everything is combined well, stir in the cake flour with a spatula or large spoon. And yes. You must use cake flour. No substitutions.

The finished crumb will a really thick dough that will kind of crumble if you pick it up. That’s what you want.

What's up crumb?!

The Cake

The cake part of this recipe is pretty straightforward. Mix together all the wet ingredients in a small bowl (eggs, yolks, sour cream, and vanilla). Then in a large bowl, add the dry ingredients, the softened butter, and just a spoonful of the sour cream mixture.

Beat this together with a hand mixer or stand mixer until the butter and flour and sugar are mixed in together well.

Starting that cake.

Once that’s all beaten together a bit, go ahead and add in all the liquid ingredients and continue to mix until the batter is smooth. It will be a pretty thick batter, but try not to over-mix it. Basically, stop mixing when you can’t see any flour.

This was my finished batter.

This is an odd batter, but it works.

Finishing the Coffee Cake

In a lightly buttered 8×8 baking dish, scrape in almost all of the cake batter. Leave about 1/2 cup of the batter for later.

Then add on all of your blackberry filling followed by the rest of your cake batter. It’s okay if it’s not perfectly spaced out. Just kind of get it all in there.

Batter, blackberries, batter.

Next, take all your crumb mixture and break it up into large pieces. Add those pieces to the cake!

The crumb will pretty much completely cover the entire cake which is awesome.

So crumby.

Because there’s a lot of moisture in the berries, you’ll need to bake this cake for a bit longer than you would without them.

Bake it at a low 325 for 60-75 minutes. A toothpick should come out of the center cleanly.

The finished version will be a thing of beauty.

A bit rustic looking...

Let this guy cool completely and then you can chop it up and serve it up.

Check out the cross-section on this cake. It’s like half crumb which is perfect.

A peek inside.

I made a few different coffee cakes over the years here on Macheesmo, but this is definitely my favorite to-date.

It would be a great thing to have around for the holidays for people to snack on with their morning coffee!

Simple and delicious.

After a long week of cooking and eating, I’m going to assume that most people are looking for something very quick and easy to make for brunch or breakfast.

One of my favorite quick breakfasts is a cut up grapefruit with a sprinkle of salt or sugar on top.

This recipe just kicks that up a notch by broiling the grapefruit with a tiny pinch of butter/sugar topping. The topping caramelized a bit and makes something resembling a grapefruit creme brulee.

In other words, it’s really good. Not to mention that it literally takes under 10 minutes.

Broiled Grapefruit

Yield: Serves 2-4.

Prep Time: 5 minutes

Total Time: 15 minutes

Ingredients:

2 grapefruits, halved and prepared
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 tablespoon sugar
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
Pinch of salt

Directions:

1) Preheat broiler on high.

2) Cut grapefruits in half and use a knife to cut out each segment away from the tough walls.

3) Mix butter, brown sugar, sugar, cinnamon and pinch of salt in a small bowl.

4) Top each grapefruit half with a good sprinkle of the topping.

5) Broil grapefruits on a baking sheet for about 4 minutes until the topping is caramelized.

6) Let cool briefly and serve immediately.

Cutting the Grapefruit

The grapefruit is kind of an intimidating fruit. It’s large and the wonderful fruit inside can be a bit tricky to get to.

I remember as a kid always asking my mom to cut up the grapefruit so I could easily scoop out each individual segment. I still use the same technique today.

One of my favorite fruits.

Just chop the grapefruit in half to reveal all of the individual segments. Then take a sharp, small knife like a paring knife or steak knife and carefully cut out each segment.

This might seem like a lot of work, but it really only takes about a minute per grapefruit. I usually run my knife around the outside of the fruit and then work on the inside, carefully cutting each segment from the hard rind part.

Be sure to cut on each side of each interior wall so every segment is loose and easy to scoop out.

Get it?

That’s pretty much the hardest part of this recipe.

The Topping

This topping is about as easy as it gets. It’s just even parts butter, brown sugar, and white sugar and then a pinch of cinnamon and salt.

Hard to go wrong here...

Mash this all together with a fork and you’re ready to rock!

A good crumb topping.

Broiling the Grapefruit

Sprinkle some of the topping on each grapefruit half. You should have enough topping with this recipe to do two grapefruits. I actually over-did the topping a bit on these two halves. You could use less because it melts down anyway.

Ready for the broiler!

Set these under the broiler on high and broil them for about 3-4 minutes.

The butter and sugar will melt pretty quickly and caramelize a bit on the grapefruit.

It forms almost a candied crust on the top of the grapefruit segments.

Just a few minutes...

Because the segments are pre-cut, they are still really easy to scoop out.

The grapefruit is slightly warm and has a nice mix of sweet and salty. It’s completely delicious.

Really good flavors.

Two of these halves (1 full grapefruit) is actually really filling.

If you’re were serving these as a side though, then I would just serve half a grapefruit per person.

The leftovers!

For a dish that takes under 10 minutes to make, it’s actually a really classy dish and very tasty.

I think even people that aren’t huge grapefruit fans would have a hard time not liking this.

Crunchy and delicious.

When I first moved to DC 6ish years ago, I lived in a group house for about 3 of those years. For those that aren’t familiar with a group house, it’s basically when 4-6 adults try to live together in large house.

Think “The Real World” except it’s actually the real world and not a reality TV show. So it’s even more real.

The house I lived in took holidays seriously, but none more serious than Halloween. Every year we would throw a lavish 150 person Halloween party and spend way more time and money than we should’ve setting up for said party.

One of my favorite traditions was always pumpkin carving. There was something awesome about five twenty-somethings sitting around, watching “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” and carving pumpkins that somebody would inevitably puke in a few days later.

As we carved, we would always snack on roasted pumpkin seeds. We always had leftover seeds though and they would kind of just sit around and get stale.

This recipe is the definitive way to handle left over pumpkin seeds.

Pumpkin Seed Amber

Yield: 1 large sheet

Prep Time: 15 minutes

Total Time: 1 hour 15 minutes

Ingredients:

2 cups pumpkin seeds, roasted
1 Teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 Teaspoon red pepper flakes
1/4 Teaspoon cinnamon
1 pound 6 ounces sugar
12 ounces water
1/4 cup light corn syrup

Helpful Equipment:
Silmat
Digital Scale

Directions:

1) Rinse pumpkin seeds well and toss with seasonings.
2) Spread seeds out on baking sheet lined with parchment paper.
3) Bake seeds at 350 degrees for 15-20 minutes, stirring occasionally.
4) Meanwhile, combine water, sugar, and corn syrup in a sauce pan. Bring to a simmer.
5) Simmer, over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until syrup is a light amber color and very thick, about 45 minutes.
6) Stir pumpkin seeds into syrup. Work quickly.
7) Spread onto a silicon baking mat and let cool for 15-20 minutes. Then break into pieces.

Roughly adapted from an Alton Brown recipe.

Roasting the Seeds

While you can buy pumpkin seeds, that’s kind of cheating. Especially during the Halloween season. Also most pumpkin seeds that you buy are shelled (so they are a light green color), but I actually like them with the shells on. They have a bit more texture.

The seed hole.

Once you get all of your seeds out of your many gourds, just rinse them off under some cold water and try to get off any huge bits of pumpkin guts. Then mix them with the salt, cinnamon, and pepper flakes and lay them out on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.

The parchment paper just helps to make sure they don’t get really stuck to the sheet.

Ready to roast!

Bake these guys at 350 degrees for about 15-20 minutes. Stir them a few times throughout the cooking process.

They are done when they are slightly crunchy and lightly toasted.

Try not to eat too many...

Making the Amber

This kind of candy has a lot of different names: brickle, brittle, sugar candy, addictive, etc. I chose to call it Amber this time around because for some reason it reminded me of when they have bugs trapped in tree sap.

Whatever you choose to call it, it’s actually pretty easy to make, but does require one thing: Patience.

To start, measure out your sugar, water, and corn syrup and add them to a pot. I like to use a digital scale for this just so I can make sure my ratios are exact. At the end of the day though, you can eyeball it, it just might make your cooking time longer if you mess it up.

Just good old sugar water.

It’s possible that you don’t need corn syrup for this, but I think it makes it a little easier to work with. If it’s your first time making sugar candy like this, I recommend it. If you’re an expert, you can probably do it without the corn syrup.

Anyway, just bring this mixture to a simmer and simmer it over medium heat. After about 20 minutes, it will be bubbling like crazy and start to reduce significantly. Stir it occasionally and just keep letting it reduce down.

Don't touch this.

After about 35-45 minutes, it will start to turn a light amber color and foam. This means that most of the water is out of the mixture which is exactly what you want.

At this point, you’re racing the clock.

Kill the heat and stir in your pumpkin seeds. Again, work quickly here. The last thing you want is for this to solidify in your pan!

Work quickly people!

Pour this mixture out onto a silicone baking mat and use a spatula to spread it out evenly.

If you don’t have one of these nice silicone mats, I think you could use wax paper or parchment paper. You definitely don’t want to let this stuff cool on something that isn’t nonstick as it’ll fuse to it and you’ll never get it off.

Cool it down!

Let this huge block of awesome cool for about 20 minute and then you can start cracking it into pieces.

I love just breaking it into random shards.

Take out some aggression.

This stuff ended up being completely addicting. It’s obviously sweet, but it’s also salty and a bit spicy from the pumpkin seeds.

The seeds also give the candy some great texture. So you get this big crunch from the candy and then kind of a chewy texture from the seeds.

Plus it just looks cool!

Sweet and salty!

So, if you have some seeds laying around from your pumpkin carving, give this a shot.

It takes some patience, but the results are really delicious!

You guys really pulled a fast one on me with the poll last week. It was a perfect tie between gin and rum! What’s a mixologist to do?

At first I tried to come up with a drink that had both gin and rum in it, but that proved to be pretty hard. Drinks do exist that use both, but they have a pretty specific flavor profile. Most of them weren’t really in the Halloween spirit so I thought it would be easier and more fun to just make two cocktails: one with rum and one with gin.

Frankly, both turned out better than I was expecting due to some awesome simple syrups.

Two Halloween Cocktails

Yield: 1 drink of each

Prep Time: 15 minutes

Total Time: 20 minutes

Ingredients:

Pumpkin Simple Syrup:
1/2 Cup pumpkin puree
1/2 Cup water
1/2 Cup sugar

Pumpkin Martini:
2 ounces rum (spiced rum would be good)
2 ounces pumpkin simple syrup
1 ounce cream
Cinnamon sugar (for rim)

Vampire Blood:
2 cups cranberry juice
1 cup sugar
1/3 cup dried hibiscus flowers

Vampire Blood Cocktail:
2.5 ounces gin
3 ounces club soda
1/2 ounce vampire blood
Garnish with lime

Helpful Equipment:
Cocktail Set

Directions:

1) For pumpkin syrup, just mix all the ingredients in a small saucepan and bring to simmer. Simmer for about 5 minutes and then chill and use. It will store in the fridge fine for a week.

2) For pumpkin martini, wet rim and run it around some cinnamon sugar. Then shake ingredients together with ice and strain into chilled glass.

3) For vampire blood, combine ingredients in small saucepan and bring to a simmer. Reduce the mixture down by about 1/3 which should take about 20 minutes. Chill and use or store for up to 2 weeks.

4) For cocktail, mix gin and club soda over ice. Pour over vampire blood mixture and garnish with lime.

Pumpkin Martini

It’s Halloween and I just had to try to mix pumpkin into one of these cocktails. Anytime you’re trying to mix in a flavor with a drink, it’s usually best to try to make a simple syrup out of it which will make it easy to mix into things.

I was a bit worried that the pumpkin wouldn’t mix well due to it’s lumpiness…

Wasn't sure about this...

But after I started stirring this mixture together though, I knew it wouldn’t be a problem. The pumpkin just kind of melted in with the sugar and after a few minutes of simmering I had this surprisingly smooth syrup that I knew would work great in a cocktail.

Pretty silky smooth!

One Note: For the pumpkin, be sure to use just 100% canned pumpkin. Don’t use the pumpkin pie filling stuff. That stuff has all kinds of crazy stuff in it.

Shake It Up

While you could make this drink on the rocks (over ice) if you wanted, it seemed a bit more elegant to make a real martini out of it. That’s means you’ll need a shaker set of some sort if you don’t have one.

Try it with spiced rum....

A Bartender’s Trick

If you want to know a hint to watch for to see if your bartender is a good one and cares about the drinks they are making, see how they handle the glass. A good bartender will always always chill the glass. That means that if the glasses aren’t kept in a refrigerator, they will ice and chill every single glass that they pour into.

It only takes a few seconds and really helps keep your drink cool for as long as possible.

Very important.

At the last minute, I decided to add a cinnamon sugar rim to the glass also just to play off some of the pumpkin flavors. Not essential, but a fun little touch.

For the rim...

Just wet your glass with a paper towel and then run the rim in the cinnamon sugar. After that, just add your ingredients to your shaker with some ice and shake shake shake. Or stir stir stir. Whatever.

It’s a pretty drink and really tasty. I think if I made this again, I might try it with spiced rum instead of white rum.

Beautiful thing.

Vampire Blood Cocktail

Ok. Onto gin land! This is Halloween play on gin and juice basically. I wanted to make a blood red syrup and then add it to a gin soda and I figured it would be cool looking and delicious.

You’ll need some red stuff to start. I used real, pure cranberry juice, but you could also use pomegranate juice.

making blood!

See those withered flower things down there? Those are hibiscus flowers and they turn things bright red and give them a light floral taste. I love them in cocktails.

Here’s an up close look at these weird things.

They kind of look like what I would imagine vampire flowers would look like actually.

Up close!

Anyway, just like the pumpkin syrup, just mix all these together and bring them to a simmer. The only difference is that with this one you want it to simmer and reduce for about 20 minutes to thicken it up a bit.

Making blood!

A Chill Tip

For both of these syrups, they are best when they are cold. They will take hours to cool off completely in the fridge. What I like to do is set up a bowl with some ice water in it and then put the syrup in a smaller bowl inside the larger bowl. Stir the syrup and the ice water in the outer bowl will chill the syrup down in just a minute or two.

Back to the cocktail!

Then just add your gin and club soda (or tonic) to a tall glass with ice and a small shot of the vampire syrup and you’re all set!

Feel free to garnish with a lime and some fangs!

Awesome drink.

Both of these drinks are freakin’ delicious and you better bet that I’m going to be having one or two of both over the Halloween weekend.

Sometimes I have good ideas.

One of the things that I really like to do when I’m coming up with a recipe is turn stuff inside out. Put what’s normally on the inside on the outside.

If you have a good flavor combo, it keeps that combo but can give you really interesting, new textures.

Now that you’re kind of inside my brain, you can probably see how it’s not a huge leap to take a chocolate covered pretzel and flip it all around.

This cookie is the result and I think that it might be the best cookie I’ve ever made. I’m not going to go so far as to call it The Best Cookie EVER like so many people do, but I’ll just say that I would put it up against any other cookie in a taste test and leave it at that.

Pretzel Chip Cookies

Yield: 18 cookies

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Total Time: 45 minutes

Ingredients:

8.5 ounces (a scant two cups) cake flour
8.5 ounces (1 2/3 cups) bread flour
1 1/4 Teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 Teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 Teaspoons kosher salt
1 1/4 Cups unsalted butter
1 Cup light brown sugar
1 1/2 Cups sugar
2 eggs
2 Teaspoons vanilla extract
1 pound chocolate chips, at least 60% cocoa
Hard pretzels, crushed

Helpful Equipment:
Kitchen Scale
Stand mixer or hand mixer

Directions:

1) Sift together flours with other dry ingredients except sugar.

2) Cream together sugar and butter until light and fluffy. Mix in eggs one at a time and vanilla.

3) Mix in dry ingredients and mix until just incorporated. Then fold in chocolate chips.

4) Cover dough with plastic wrap and let rest for 24 hours in the fridge.

5) When ready to bake cookies, preheat oven to 350 degrees.

6) Make 3.5 ounce balls of dough (a large golf ball). Press dough ball into crushed pretzels on top. Press on a lot of pretzels.

7) Add cookie to baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Six cookies should fit on each baking sheet.

8) Bake cookies for 18-20 minutes until lightly browned but still chewy on the inside.

9) Let cookies cool on baking sheet for 5 minutes, then transfer to rack to finish cooling.

Adapted from an NY Times Recipe.

The Flours

I’ve been eyeing the recipe that I adapted for these guys for a while. One of the things that intrigued me about it was how it ditches all-purpose flour for a mixture of cake flour and bread flour. I could see how that would give the cookies a soft texture but still be somewhat chewy which sounds like a winning cookie to me.

Interesting flour combo.

I usually don’t worry about weighing cookie ingredients, although I know I should, but for this recipe it seemed to call for a very exact ratio of cake flour and bread flour so I pulled out my digital scale.

Gotta weigh it!

As far as the chocolate goes, the article in the NY Times goes on and on about how to get the absolute perfect ratio of chocolate to dough and exactly what kinds of chips result in the best cookie.

I’m sure they are right, but I’m not really going to order chocolate off the internet just to make chocolate chips cookies. So I just picked up a few different kinds of chips that looked good to me and tossed them in.

Use a few different chips.

Making the Dough

This is a pretty standard cookie dough to make.

Start by sifting together the flours and other dry ingredients except the sugar. It is somewhat important to sift the flours here because cake flour can sometimes clump up pretty badly.

Then, using a mixer (hand or stand) beat together the sugar and butter until it’s a light, fluffy texture. Then mix in the eggs one at a time on low. Then add the vanilla.

Next, add the dry ingredients to the butter and sugar mixture and mix until the flour is incorporated. Mix on low and don’t over mix it or your cookies will get too chewy.

It should take under a minute to get your flour mixed in, then gently mix in your chocolate chips until they are evenly incorporated.

Don't over-mix it!

The Waiting

There was one part of the article that I was a bit skeptical about. They said that it’s very important to let your cookie dough rest in the fridge for at least 24 hours before baking your cookies.

This is a serious test of willpower. You have these delicious cookies just sitting there, but you have to wait.

The idea behind it is to give the dough plenty of time to absorb all the liquid. If you bake them right away, the flour won’t get a chance to even absorb the eggs.

I didn’t actually bake a cookie right away to compare, but I must say that the dough had a much different texture after sitting overnight.

So I think it’s worth it if you can stand the wait.

Once the dough is mixed, just cover it with plastic wrap and store it in the fridge overnight.

Patience people.

Forming the Cookies

When you’re finally ready to make the cookies, just scoop out about 3.5 ounces of cookie dough. I actually weighed mine to make sure it was right, but basically it should be the size of a large golfball.

This amount of dough makes a pretty enormous cookie. You can only fit six of them on a baking sheet at a time.

When each cookie is rolled into a ball, press it into some crushed pretzels on one side. Make sure a good amount of pretzels are stuck to the cookie.

Then add each cookie to a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.

Seriously large cookies

Bake these guys at 350 degrees for about 18 minutes. The cookies should be nicely browned on top, but still soft in the center.

These guys turned out so perfect.

Done deal.

Once they come out of the oven, let them cool on the baking sheet for five minutes and then transfer them to a cooling rack to finish cooling.

Serving them a bit warm is a really good idea.

I do not mess around.

Biting into one of these is a pretty intense experience. The salt from the pretzels is the perfect topping for the cookies. It really brings out the chocolate flavor in the cookies.

At the same time there’s this fantastic texture thing happening between the soft cookie and the crunchy pretzels.

This picture doesn’t really do it justice, but maybe it’ll give you an idea!

Chomp!

There’s a few tricky parts with this recipe and you could ignore them if you dare. You could not weigh or sift your flours. You could not let your dough sit for 24 hours. You could make wimpy little cookies. They would still be good.

But if you do take the time to follow some of the more annoying steps, you’ll be well-rewarded.

Pretzels. Chocolate. Cookies.

Is it the best chocolate chip cookie IN THE WORLD? I don’t know, but I definitely wouldn’t turn one down.

My first canned thing!

One of my cooking resolutions for the year was to start canning and pickling food. I love the idea of having a pantry full of delicious pickled foods and jams that I can hit up anytime I want.

I also happen to love pickled foods. One of my absolute favorite pickled foods is okra. Spicy okra to be exact. There’s a brand of spicy pickled okra that you can buy in the store but it’s seriously $5-$6 dollars per jar. For okra.

I can house an entire jar in one sitting so it’s a bit of a problem.

When I was at the farmers market a few weeks ago I saw a huge mound of beautiful okra and just decided to make it happen. I’m really glad I did!

Spicy Pickled Okra

Yield: 12 16-ounce Jars

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Total Time: 50 minutes

Ingredients:

4 pounds fresh okra
12 cloves garlic
12 Serrano peppers
1/2 Teaspoon dill seed per jar
1/2 Teaspoon Szechuan Peppercorns per jar
1/2 Teaspoon red pepper flakes per jar
1/8 Teaspoon pickling crisp granules per jar

Brining Liquid:
8 Cups Water
8 Cups vinegar
1 Cup Pickling salt
1/2 Cup sugar

Helpful Equipment:
16 ounce jars
Canning Kit

Directions:

1) Rinse okra. Sterilize jars, lids, rings, and utensils by boiling them in water for 10 minutes. Bring brining liquid to a boil.

2) To each sterilized jar, add a chopped pepper, a chopped garlic clove, and a big pinch of all the spices. Add 1/8 Teaspoon of pickle crisp to keep the veggies crispy.

3) Stuff jars with okra, stem-side up. Make sure they have some room to move around, but you can fill them pretty full.

4) Pour brining liquid over okra. Leave 1/4-1/2 inch of space at the top of the jar. Seal jars with lids and rings. Gently shake jars to distribute spices and brine.

5) Seal the jars by boiling them in water for 10-15 minutes (15 minutes if you're above 3000 feet).

6) Remove jars and let cool completely for 24 hours. After cooling, check seal on jars by pushing down the middle part of the lid. If it pops back up, the jar isn't sealed.

7) Store in a cool, dark place for 2 weeks. You can then eat them.

The okra will keep fine for one year.

The Okra and Spices

Okra is one of those foods that not everyone likes, but normally the people that do like it absolutely LOVE IT.

I think the people that don’t like tend to dislike the slime factor that okra can have. When it’s pickled it isn’t all that slimy. It’s just delicious.

Lots of okra!

Prepping the okra is really easy. Basically just rinse it off. You can leave the stems and everything on the okra so just rinse it and you’re ready to go.

As far as spices go, I wanted to make sure they had plenty of flavor so I raided my spice drawer!

Great flavors.

While you are prepping all the jars and everything, get your brining liquid started on the stove.

This will smell intense and alert your entire neighborhood that you are, in fact, pickling something.

Don't taste this.

Preparing the Jars

Before I get too far into this post, let me start with a general disclaimer: This is only the second time I’ve ever canned anything ever. Therefore, if you see something that you think might be wrong… it’s probably wrong.

What I do know though is that cleanliness is one of the most important things when it comes to canning. You have to make sure that your jars and utensils are completely sterilized before you add in the food. The easiest way to get this done is to get a large pot of boiling water going and boil all the jars, lids, rings, and utensils for about 10 minutes.

That’ll kill any pesky germs that are living on them.

Once they are clean you can get down to the fun part which is adding in all the spices.

For each jar, I added a whole Serrano pepper, a whole clove of garlic (roughly chopped), and big pinches of various spices. I was a bit worried that these would be too spicy, but they turned out great.

All in the jar.

Once your spices are in the bottom of the jars, you can stuff in as much okra as you can fit!

In reality though, you don’t want to over-stuff the jars. They should be snug, but still be able to move around some so that the pickling liquid can circulate around them.

Stuff it in there.

Once you have the okra and spices in each jar, pour your simmering brine into each one. You’ll need a basic canning kit to make this whole process easier and it’ll come with a perfect funnel that fits the jar heads nicely. It makes it really easy.

When you’re filling up the jars, leave about 1/4-1/2 inch of room at the top of the jars. Don’t worry about covering the okra completely because guess what: they float. So they will always slightly bob above the water line. It’s not a big deal though. They will still pickle fine.

I gave all my jars a good shake once they were sealed though just to make sure the spices were evenly distributed and the okra coated well with the liquid.

Adding the brine.

Sealing the Jars

Sealing the jars is the step that had me the most worried mainly because it involves setting sealed, completely full jars in simmering water for 15 minutes.

I had visions of okra bombs exploding all over my kitchen…

Luckily it went according to plan. Again, the canning kit is pretty essential. It includes a rack so you can set the jars slightly lifted in the pot so water can circulate around them. It also will include a nice set of tongs that will help when lifting the jars in and out of the boiling water.

One note on the cooking time. Based on what I read, if you are below 3,000 feet elevation, you only need to boil the jars for 10 minutes, but since I’m above that I had to go the full 15 minutes.

Very important!

When these jars come out, they will be hot. Like… really hot.

The lids may be slightly bulged out a bit. That’s all totally normal.

Set the jars somewhere so they can cool slowly for 24 hours.

Checking the Seal

After 24 hours, your jars should be sealed air-tight. The way to test this is to press down on the center of the lid. If you can press it down and it pops back up then that jar isn’t sealed correctly. I think this is fairly rare and shouldn’t be something you should worry about. But definitely check them.

All of mine were just fine and considering it was my first try, I thought I would have at least one that wasn’t sealed.

If you do get one that isn’t sealed, you can pop it open, seal it with a new lid and ring and re-process it in boiling water to try to get a good seal. If this happens, be sure to wipe off the rim of the jar before adding the new lid. Sometimes bits of food or dirt can stop the jar from sealing correctly.

Perfect fit!

The Waiting Game

Once the jars are sealed and labeled, store them in a cool, dark place for two weeks before popping one open. That should be enough time to let the pickling liquid work its magic.

Assuming you don’t want to eat all 12 jars immediately, they will keep fine for one year.

I was itching to try these guys out. When I popped my first jar, I knew I was in business based on the smell alone. It smelled spicy and salty and, well, perfect.

The okra was slightly crispy and perfectly flavored.

Chomp!

So far I think I’m batting 1.000 in the canning department. My peach jalapeno jam turned out really great also.

By my estimations, I was able to make this batch of pickled okra for about 1/2 of the cost of the store variety. My next batch will be even cheaper because I’ll have some of the jars already.

Update: A few readers sent me emails saying that I should mention the dangers of botulism when canning. Botulism is a really serious bacteria that can grow in canned foods that have a low acidity or are not cooked to a high enough temperature. The only way to be sure that you are safe is to either A) test the pH level of your food before canning it or B) use a pressure cooker. For more info, check out the USDA’s guide to canning.

Whoa. Cool.

Ever since I was experimenting with (read: eating a lot of) my PB & J sushi last week, I’ve been on a huge peanut butter and jelly kick. I’ve eaten a peanut butter and jelly sandwich every day of the week for the last ten days or so.

Call it sappy, but it really does remind me of my childhood. These days I leave the ends on, but other than that it’s the same old sandwich.

Of course, I can’t help myself when it comes to thinking of ways to ramp up something that I like that much.

So I figured it would be fun to make an actual bread loaf with peanut butter and jelly rolled right into it. Then any slice of toast is, like, an instant peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

How could you not like that!

Peanut Butter and Jelly Loaf

Yield: 9 Inch Loaf

Prep Time: 15 minutes + 16 hour rise time

Total Time: 1 hour 10 minutes

Ingredients:

2 1/4 Cups bread flour, plus some for dusting
1 Teaspoon kosher salt
1/3 Teaspoon instant yeast
1 Cup + 2 Tablespoons cool water
1/4 Cup unsalted smooth peanut butter
1 large egg
1/3 Cup seedless jam
1/2 Cup peanuts, chopped and divided

Egg Wash:
1 egg + 1 Tablespoon water

Helpful Equipment:
Loaf pan
Wire Rack

Directions:

1) Mix dry ingredients (flour yeast salt) together in a large bowl.

2) In a blender or food processor, pulse peanut butter together with water and egg until mixture is smooth.

3) Add wet mixture to dry stuff and stir to combine. It should be a pretty wet, sticky dough.

4) Cover dough loosely and let rise for 12-16 hours.

5) Dust dough with flour after it rises and dust a clean surface with flour as well. Turn out dough onto surface and shape it or roll it into a large rectangle (about 8x12).

6) Spread jam all over surface of dough, leaving about 1/2 inch around the edges.

7) Fold the bottom 1/3 of the dough over and then continue to roll the dough up to form a jelly roll of sorts.

8) To prep your loaf pan, butter it well and sprinkle the bottom with half of your peanuts.

9) When jelly roll is finished, tuck the ends under and place it seam-side down in your loaf pan. Cover it and let it rise for another hour.

10) Brush the loaf with egg wash and sprinkle the rest of the chopped peanuts on top.

11) Bake loaf at 450 degrees for 50-60 minutes. Remove from pan as soon as possible and let cool on a wire rack.

Adapted from My Bread.

Starting the bread

The nice thing about this loaf is that it’s based on a no knead bread recipe from Jim Lahey.

Which means that it takes almost no time to make, but it does require about 12-16 hours to rise.

Normal stuff plus awesome stuff.

Ingeniously, Jim recommends mixing the peanut butter in with the no knead dough which gives it a really nice peanut butter flavor and also a soft texture.

Unfortunately, it’s kind of tricky mixing peanut butter into flour. The easiest way to do it is to blend your peanut butter, water, and egg together to make a sort of slurry and then mix that together with your dry ingredients.

This will smell really peanuty which is good!

Dough is gonna rise.

Once your dough is mixed together, it should be pretty moist. Just stir it together until everything is mixed. No need to over-mix it.

Then cover it loosely with plastic wrap and let it sit at room temperature for 12-16 hours. It should double in volume.

Forming the Loaf

Once your dough has risen, dust it well with flour and also throw some flour down on a clean surface. Then scoop out your dough onto the floured surface and lightly roll it into a large rectangle.

You’re shooting for a rectangle that’s about 8×12 in size.

Then spread your jam all over the surface of the dough!

Needs a bit more jelly...

Try to leave about a 1/2 inch around the edge of the dough.

Fold the bottom third of the dough up and then continue to roll the dough away from you to form a tight jelly roll of dough.

Roll 'er up!

To prepare your loaf pan for baking, butter it liberally so the dough doesn’t stick and then sprinkle about 1/4 cup of roughly chopped peanuts right in the bottom of the pan.

See what I did there?

Once you have your loaf rolled up, fold under the ends to form a nice even loaf. Then just plop the roll right into your loaf pan with the seam-side down. That’ll prevent most of your jelly from exploding out of the loaf.

Loosely cover the loaf and let it rise for another hour or so. It should again double in size.

Then brush the loaf with a light egg wash (1 egg + 1 tablespoon water) and sprinkle on another 1/4 cup of chopped peanuts.

This guy is ready for the oven now!

Ready for the oven.

Bake the loaf in a pre-heated 450 degree oven for about 50 minutes. The loaf should be really nice and golden brown. If it isn’t, then bake for another 10 minutes.

Check the loaf halfway through and if the peanuts are browning really quickly (mine were) then cover the loaf pan loosely with foil which will keep them out of the direct heat.

The final loaf is a thing of beauty!

This will smell amazing.

Two things to note about this loaf:

1) It’s inevitable that some jelly will escape from the roll. When you pull your loaf pan out it might look as if a lot of jelly has cooked out of it. Have no fear. It’s probably fine as long as you rolled it tightly and cooked it with the seam side down.

2) When you pull the loaf out of the oven, immediately invert it on a pan or wire rack to get the loaf out of the pan. If you let it cool in the pan, it’ll turn really soggy. Ideally, you can cool it on a rack, but whatever you do, take it out of the pan as soon as possible.

This was my final loaf. As you can see, some jelly escaped, but it was still delicious.

Cool it down.

Getting Crazy

As soon as I cut open the loaf and saw the cool jelly swirl, I knew this was a keeper of a recipe.

Of course, I had to take it to the next level as soon as possible and make a double peanut butter and jelly!

Double PB & J Slam!

What do you think about that?!