Fooding Project Concept

I don’t want to wind up spending my summer working at the bakery the same way I spent the summer a couple of years ago working at Blockbuster: putting in 30 or so hours at a place where I’m, in all honesty, not-so-well-versed in the product. While I most definitely enjoy seeing movies, the combination of not having much time outside work to make full use of my rental privilege of 5 free movies each week and the lack of someone to spend movie-watching time with made for a decidedly film-free few months of employment at an entertainment giant.

In order to encourage me to sample more of our options at the bakery, I’m declaring a new project that doesn’t necessarily have to be limited to myself. This idea will serve a multi-fold purpose: I’ll become knowledgeable about the tasty treats at my bakery, I’ll have something new to write about at least once each week, and I’ll encourage other people to be equally inquisitive with boulangerie-centered foodstuffs!

Guilty Pleasure Sundays will see it’s first entry on June 11, wherein I will describe at least one baked good sold by La Bonne Boulangerie that I have eaten that day. If I can possibly manage to try everything (that I’d actually like to try–and I’m not allergic to) by the end of the summer, I’ll consider it both a success and an invitation to switch it up to treats from other local eateries.

In the meantime, I’ll leave you with a couple of reviews of things I’ve already tasted…

Banana Nut Muffin
Our muffins are the standard, generously-sized hunk of quickbread baked by most American bakeries. Where they deviate from the formula is with their yogurt-enriched batter base. The result is an incredibly flavorful and moist muffin, with a slight tanginess to balance out any breadiness and the sweetness. I think it also has the effect of enhancing the flavors of the particular muffins–even though this muffin only has a swirl of fresh banana purée in it instead of all throughout, the taste of banana permeates the entire muffin with rich, real fruit flavor.

One peeve of mine when it comes to any baked good featuring some sort of “add-in” is a too-generous hand with the addition. Nothing can ruin a banana nut muffin faster than the presence of too many walnuts. The name of the food is banana nut–not nut banana. ;P Since nuts in general tend to be very flavorful and can easily overpower any dish, the line between “enough” and “too much” is very fine. Somehow our baker has perfected the art of balance with our muffins because the every-few-bites presence of a perfect walnut was enough to have a pleasant nutty flavor in the muffin and an intermittent hunk to delight my teeth with something to chew down on without being the least bit stronger than the banana flavor.

Overall, I’m not exaggerating nor am I patronizing when I say that this was hands-down the best banana nut muffin I’ve ever had. Between the surprisingly intense moistness and the wonderfully natural and fresh flavors, it’ll be extremely hard to top.

Low-Fat/Grilled Veggie Wrap
Yes, you read that name correctly; my bakery actually sells wraps. We also have (all homemade of course!) soups, salads, fruit bowls, focaccia and croissant sandwiches, yogurt parfaits, dips, fresh mozzarella, and other market-type goodies. La Bonne is actually both an authentic European-style bakery and a café.

Of all the sandwiches we offer–and there’s actually quite a few!–the veggie wrap was of course the first to catch my eye and hold it long enough for me to drop the $6.99 to take it home. After popping open the package to discover a hulk of a halved wrap inside, I actually think that while it sounds a little overpriced for a simple sandwich, the amount of food is truly rather impressive. At this point I’ve already had this sandwich twice, and being famished the first time after not eating a bite all day, I did actually eat the entire thing at once, but the second time I bought it, I found it was absolutely plenty for two meals for me.

What inspired me to have this wrap twice within a two-week timeframe despite having the option of trying many other different sandwiches is the mind-blowingly-delicious quality of the veggies. Seriously, whomever devised the recipe for the marinade our owners use deserves an award and already has my undying love. On top of being infused with fabulous flavors, the veggies were perfectly grilled–the zucchini and summer squash weren’t at all too mushy, the asparagus was pleasantly crisp, and the red peppers had incredibly sweet, charred flavor.

Even something as seemingly insignificant as the wrap itself clearly receives the same level of intense attention as the vegetables. Thanks to its immenseness, the sandwich is as I said, a substantial portion. It also holds up incredibly well: even cold, it doesn’t crack, tear, or break but rather maintains a level of chewiness that is really quite enjoyable and nicely conducive to wrap-consumption without wrap-disassemblage.

All in all, I’m willing to bet this sandwich will be gracing my table again sometime soon and many times after. It’s flavorful, satisfying, and definitely well worth the expense!

Tags: aroma · bakery · banana nut muffin · crisp veggies · food · fooding project · grilled veggie wrap · Guilty Pleasure Sundays · la bonne boulangerie · lunch · marinated · purposeful · quickbread · snacks · yogurt base

Written by Melody @ 5:03 pm Categories: Breads · Breakfast Foods · Food Musings · Main Meals · No Photos · Vegetables

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Pizza and Muffins and Curry and Coffee…!

Looking over my Flickr account, I’ve eaten quite a bit of yummy things and not taken the time to write about it here! That’ll change right now, then.

A little over a week ago, my sister decided she wanted to make some garlic knots at lunchtime, so we ordered a pizza to go along with them from the only place near campus that was delivering that day, Cosmos Café. The timing wound up perfect, as the pizza arrived just as the garlic knots were coming out of the oven.

Garlicky dough-knotsWhile they were certainly fresh and delicious, my sister and I agreed they could’ve used a bit more garlic-and-oil topping. Next time, we’ll be keeping that in mind. At the same time, we found that her baking stone makes a wonderful difference with the texture of the bread. The outside gets a nice, dry crust while the inside stays perfectly soft. While lacking a little in the flavor department, these garlic knots had truly authentic dough.

Cosmos pizza with peppers and onionsThe pizza was pretty comparitive. It did possess the thin crust, not-to-much cheese, and yummy veggies that comprise my pizza preferences in those areas, but the sauce was just good, not fantastic. It well-satisfied my pizza desires, though, and I would definitely order from Cosmos again.

I ate it–yep yep!Here you can see that the cheese and crust are in balance. If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s when pizza has more cheese than crust. That’s plain just too much greasiness, ick. At the same time, I much prefer thin-crust pizza to Sicilian-style, so dramatically more crust than cheese is also in the Terrible Pizza section of my book. This pizza could’ve had less cheese and that would’ve put it into the Perfect Pizza section, at least with respect to cheesiness, but it was certainly far from disagreeable. :]

Hmm…I think if I don’t paginate this entry, it’s about to get excessively long, so continue on to the full entry page if you’d like to read more about what I’ve eaten and cooked and eaten again!

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Tags: baking stone · chicken · chopped pecans · coffee · crack · food · garlic · garlic knots · homemade pizza · linguine · mozzarella · mushrooms · oil · onions · parmigiano · passion · pecan muffins · peppers · pizza · quickbread · recipe · shallots · thai green curry paste

Written by Melody @ 1:38 pm Categories: Breads · Breakfast Foods · Drinks · Fusion Cuisine · Italian · Main Meals · Pasta · Photos · Poultry · Recipes · Thai

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Swimming in Muffins

As if I needed even more sweet, bready, browned lumps of dough, tonight I baked up a batch of apple coffee cake muffins. I actually do need them, though–to take with me to a party tomorrow. The professor for the drawing class I’ve been a TA (teaching assistant) for this semester likes to turn the final critiques for her classes into food parties. Since there’s a lot more space in the ceramics studio for a nice buffet spread, we really go all out in there with everything from appetizers to dessert all brought in by the students. However, the drawing studio has basically just one small stand we could put food on, plus it doesn’t get thoroughly scrubbed top to bottom like we do to the ceramics studio before the final crit, so bringing a lot of food isn’t really…safe.

So we’re just having a small breakfast party. One student is picking up bagels, another cream cheese and butter, Toby (the professor) is bringing orange juice and utensils, and I offered to bake muffins. Starting with a recipe from my now-beloved Martha Stewart Baking Handbook–no joke, I’ve been turning to this book whenever I’m looking to bake something because if she hasn’t included a recipe for what I want, she’s at least offered some tips on how to make it perfect–I modified it to use a fruit that is actually in season: apples. The result?

Muffins everywhere, oh no–er–yay!A nice big tub full of mini apple coffee cake muffins. One suffered severe decapitation during my attempt to remove it from the muffin pan, so in its beheaded, dual-part state, it succumbed to the wrath of my tummy. These muffins can be very well summed-up in one word: fantabulous. While not quite like a coffee cake, they definitely have the flavors of one, and they bake up with such a light, delicate, airy, and very moist crumb that I could’ve easily devoured more if it wasn’t for the fact that they are already spoken for. It’s sad that food has to have a designated purpose for me to not eat it. Like the two remaining Portuguese sweet muffins all wrapped up and metaphorically labelled “Robyn’s” for when I see her on Friday. Otherwise they’d be swimming in my tummy with more maple syrup. Mmm.

Tumbly bundles of goodnessSo hopefully my students will like these tender little morsels as much as I do. Mostly because I really don’t need to be bringing home a ton of super-yummy muffins tomorrow that no longer have any kind of reservation placed on them… ;x

Tags: apple coffee cake muffins · bagels · baking handbook · breakfast · cream cheese · food · fruit · martha stewart · mini muffins · party · tub

Written by Melody @ 11:36 pm Categories: Breads · Photos

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Bread Overload

For some reason, I’ve apparently had a need for sweet bread-type things this past week. Last Wednesday, I made some sweet Indian roti, I mixed them up again on Friday, and today I cooked Portuguese sweet muffins. At this point, though, I can say that I am quite thoroughly breaded out. Oi. However, I did reach this point of sweet bread saturation quite deliciously, as you’ll see.

Happy little sugar-laminated breadsThe roti is really nice to quickly satiate a sweet bread craving attack. Flour, salt, water, and sugar is all you need along with a little bit of time to mix the first three into a dough, roll them, sprinkle with the sugar, fold up, and roll out again before pan-grilling. They come out chewy and light, with fabulous layers of gooey sugar. For variation on Friday, I added a tiny bit of sugar to the flour and salt for the dough along with some oil before the water. The oil makes for a more tender bread that is easier to flatten. However, for some reason the sugar-laminating doesn’t work quite as well. Some seems to get…absorbed by the bread and it starts to brown before all of the sugar gets a chance to become melty. I think I like them without the oil better, though maybe if I’m particularly wanting a tender bread, I’d go with the oil.

As for other tender breads, today’s Portuguese sweet muffins were a fantastically fun and delectable adventure! I’ve had a packet of yeast lying around since I bought one from my sister over a week ago, and I just couldn’t decide what to make with it. Today, it came to me in a sudden craving for the Portuguese sweet muffins my dad used to regularly buy from Trader Joe’s (a natural foods supermarket chain). After searching high and low–or really, just a few minutes at AllRecipes.com–I came upon this recipe that, aside from a lack of lemon, looked like it would at least come pretty close.

No Portuguese were harmed in the making of this muffinIt surpassed Trader Joe’s by galaxies. While I would appreciate the addition of some lemon in these muffins, it certainly isn’t necessary. I can’t imagine it being removed from the Trader Joe’s version because it needs the freshness of the flavor to make up for the lack of freshness in the muffin. Seriously, now that I’ve gotten very confident in my bread-making ability with these muffins, I will never, ever buy packaged breads again. I so rarely get cravings for bread that it’ll be worth the time to spend baking my own. I get cravings for cakes and pastries much too often to completely exclude packaged stuff, though, as much as I prefer homemade. ;x

Soft and moist inside, firm and dry outside–perfect!Being moist by nature, these muffins wind up with a completely different texture when packaged. The muffin becomes uniformly moist with tougher tops and bottoms in a package, whereas the fresh ones I made had a more extreme, pleasant contrast between the doughy, soft interiors and firm, dry tops and bottoms. Toasting is absolutely necessary for the Trader Joe’s muffins because the chewiness of the exteriors is just unpalatable right out of the bag, but I wound up eating my muffin sans toasting today. I think it could very well be enjoyed toasted, and at the same time, it isn’t a detriment to devour it as-is.

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There’s nothing like sweet breads topped with maple syrupI didn’t quite consume it “as-is,” though. After tasting a small piece to see how it was plain, I had the sudden idea to top it with a little maple syrup and a pat of butter instead of my usual toasted-and-buttered treatment for the Trader Joe’s sub-pars. This concoction thus satisfied not only my desire for a sweet bread but also pancakes. While Portuguese sweet muffins are certainly not like a pancake, I almost exclusively have maple syrup on only either French toast or pancakes, so the association between “syrup” and “pancakes” is very strong in my mind. I’d never consider dressing a Trader Joe’s sad-excuse-for-a-muffin in this manner, though. I think I’ll stick to having those toasted-and-buttered.

So the moral of the story for all my bread-making recently is that if bread is on my mind, it’s time to whip out some mixing bowls, flour the table (the only flat surface large enough for kneading here–unfortunately), and heat up the stove or oven. Store-bought goods just aren’t worth it.

Tags: butter · food · laminated · maple syrup · oil · portuguese sweet muffins · recipe · sweet indian roti · trader joe's

Written by Melody @ 8:46 pm Categories: Breads · Breakfast Foods · Food Musings · Indian · Photos · Portuguese · Recipes · Side Dishes

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Cinnamon Rolls

My sister and I baked cinnamon rolls today, and I think I’ll just let the photos do all the talking…

My sister did most of the work–mixing, rolling, filling, cutting… I did the manual labor–kneading. And she was distracted at the critical point of just-out-of-the-oven-ness for the icing, so I was designated the Icer of the Rolls.

Today’s kitchen adventure has inspired me to do some of my own yeasted bread baking, so I think I’ll be getting some yeast for myself the next time I’m at the supermarket. It’s becoming quite apparent that my sister and I have completely opposite preferences when it comes to the mouthfeel of various foods, so it’ll be good for me to make some breads of my own. She made what she called a foccacia earlier in the week, but really it was a foccacia-turned-chewy-bread-as-per-Crystal’s-likes. ;P Not airy and light with a nice crust. And then there are our divergences on the topics of frosting amounts, cookie textures, and so on.

So I’m going to be baking some breads in the near future.

Finally, I figured I should balance out my day with something a bit more healthful, so after having probably one too many cinnamon rolls, I later made myself some sautéed onions with soba noodles for dinner. At least I found room for some veggies today, if it wasn’t anywhere near my normal level of vegetable consumption.

Tags: cinnamon rolls · food · icing · yeast bread

Written by Melody @ 8:06 pm Categories: Breads · Photos

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Steamed Bun of Taro Goodness

After I was done with work today, I went over to Waldbaum’s to buy the weirdest thing ever: three pounds of butter and a package of yeast, and I followed up that stop with a visit to the local Asian supermarket. For what, you may ask, was I in need of so much sweet dairy fat, dormant microorganisms, and non-Western goods?

I actually have no immediate need for such a large quantity of butter, but Waldbaum’s has it on sale this week for buy one get two free. That is an insanely amazing price for butter, so I figured I’d stock up. I enjoy baking, and that generally requires butter for the best-tasting results, so it’ll be useful to have around. I’ve got two of the pounds in the freezer, so they’ll keep for months yet. It’s all about getting good deals on pantry staples. ;]

As for the yeast, my sister’s been wanting yeast for a while now, and she kept forgetting to tell me so whenever I was going food shopping recently. I was thinking about it today, so I got it for her. I’m curious to see what exactly it is she needs microscopic fermenting factories for, but I guess I’ll find out soon enough!

Finally, the Asian grocery store was basically just for killing the 30 minutes I had left after my food shopping until the next bus back to campus would be going by. However, what began as an innocent visit to do a reconnaissance of what the store has as compared to what is contained in my growing knowledge of Asian foodstuffs became a TARO PURCHASING TRIP OF DOOM.

While passing by the refrigerated cases on the right side of the store, I came upon the so-labelled Steamed Taro Buns I’d spotted the last time I was there but forwent buying because I was on a mission to find sweet red bean paste or adzuki beans. This time, on the other hand, I had no such goal in mind, and so the last, lone package of hulking taro buns was quickly removed from it’s chill-house of solitariness into my possession for impending consumption.

The bus took seemingly forever to get to the stop I was waiting at, but that was certainly because I was impatient to steam up these buns and taste the taro-y goodness lurking inside. Almost as soon as I got back to my apartment, I set up a pot to steam them, and put two buns inside–one for me, and one for my sister’s friend Terry. Ten minutes later, we were both very happily devouring soft, moist, steamy buns of taroness.

When I say these buns are hulking, I mean they’re hulking. After it was steamed, the thing was easily the size of my fist. I wasn’t complaining, though! I certainly got my money’s worth with six of these insanely large buns for $2.75. After removing the paper lining from the bottom of the bun, ready to introduce it to my tummy, I was overwhemingly overjoyed to discover IT WAS ROLLED LIKE A CINNAMON BUN. I could PEEL IT APART INTO A SPIRAL.

So of course I did. ;D

Combined with the novelty of de-laminating the bun, the deliciousness of the barely-sweet, just-enough-taro-flavor mound of dough in front of me made this the most enjoyable non-cake-bread-eating experience I can remember. Forget about dinner rolls. Move over regular bread. Give me taro buns or give me…no bread! ;P

Once that entire hunk of taro bun delight was being submerged in tummy juices, I decided the steaming of another was in order. That’s how the trip to the Oriental Grocery became a Taro Purchasing Trip of Doom. While one bun was absolutely wonderful, two was…well, one too many, heh. I am so stuffed right now, but at least I am STUFFED WITH DELICIOUSNESS!!

Tags: asian grocery · butter · food · taro buns · yeast

Written by Melody @ 10:27 pm Categories: Appetizers/Snacks · Breads · Chinese · Photos

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My 14-Hour Culinary Marathon

I had requested to do Thanksgiving dinner this year about a month ago. Starting after we returned from the diner on Wednesday night, I undertook making a complete meal from start to finish. On the menu was pumpkin bread for daytime nibbling, turkey, cranberry sauce, mashed sweet potatoes, mashed cauliflower, green beans, stuffing, and pumpkin pie. With an incredibly brief break for sleep in the wee hours of the morning, I was in the kitchen from about 10pm Wednesday until 4:20pm on Thanksgiving Day. I tend to do things a little on the slow side when it a) involves an unfamiliar recipe and b) involves any sort of cutting–my knife skills, while safe, are certainly not yet very efficient.

My preparation got underway with setting up the turkey to brine for several hours. I cooked up a nice brine in a huge stockpot, let it cool, put in the fresh turkey, and let it soak up all the flavors and get succulently moist. Once that was resting out in the garage, I put together the cranberry sauce because it had to chill overnight. After that was done cooking and set aside in the fridge to cool, it was time to prepare the crust for the pumpkin pie. That came together pretty quickly (as is necessary with pastry crusts), and next up was to bake some pumpkin bread for everyone to munch on for breakfast and throughout the day on Thursday while waiting for dinner.

A happy loaf of pumpkin bread

I simply had to try a piece as soon as it was cool enough!There was a recipe in my brand-new The Baking Handbook by Martha Stewart that looked fantastic, so I passed on baking my mom’s traditional recipe, which she does every year at both Thanksgiving and Christmas. Clearly, Martha knows what she’s doing and sometimes it’s definitely worth it to fix something that isn’t broken. While my mom’s bread hasn’t been labelled as “bad” in my book, it’s totally been knocked way down on the list in the face of this new recipe.

Thanks to Martha, I’ve discovered the wondrousness and glory of a super-moist, super-tender, not-overly-sweet, very-pumpkiny-and-flavorful pumpkin bread. And I never considered my mom’s recipe terribly unhealthy until now–the Baking Handbook recipe uses one-sixth of the oil my mom’s does, and yet it’s still a bazillion times more moist. I’m going to attribute it to the buttermilk, because the red velvet caked I baked back in September had the same kind of moistness and also called for buttermilk. I have now decided that buttermilk is a Kitchen Essential and Makes Everything Better. Seriously, I think I’m going to be very critical of any cake-like recipe that doesn’t call for it from now on, and I’m going to continue experimenting with using it elsewhere (I’d tried it with oatmeal, and dude, does it make the best oatmeal EVER).

Consumption of that slice took place, the turkey was turned in the brine, and then I settled in to get some much-needed sleep for a couple of hours. After waking up a bit earlier than I had planned due to other people starting to make noise through the house, I got the turkey out of the brine and set up in the roasting pan to go in the oven later and put together the pie so it would be done and cooling all day and the oven could be devoted to the turkey.

All of the food set out to be served

Mmm…crisp grean beans and sweet red onion

Fruity, meaty, flavorful stuffing

Oh, the caramelized brown sugary goodness…While the pie was baking, I cut up the bread for the stuffing. I have to say, it’s really ridiculous how difficult sourdough bread is to cut. Jesus. It took me an hour to cut it into pieces, and most of that time was spent just cutting the slices because it required so much effort! I actually had to take breaks to rest a couple of times!! While I loved the taste of the sourdough for stuffing, I don’t think I’ll be putting myself through all of that again. ;P The pie was done baking by the time the bread had succumbed to my will and sharp tool of doom, so I set that out to cool and toasted the bread cubes. Those were set aside until it was time to put the stuffing together, and I got to work chopping the aromatic veggies to stuff the turkey.

The turkey was stuffed and prepped for the oven and began cooking just about noon, right on time, woo! I set to work chopping up the seemingly massive amount of onions and celery and carrot for the stuffing, and then I started putting that together. I couldn’t help tasting after I browned the sausage, hee. Italian turkey sausage has been added near the top of the “Animal Proteins I Like” list. ;x Yum! :yum: The mountain of veggies were cooked down and stirred into the bread cubes, and that was set aside until the turkey came out of the oven and it could get finished.

Once I’d readied the stuffing, I took a brief sit-down break and then got working on the other side dishes. First was the green beans with pan-roasted red onions and balsamic glaze, then I cooked and mashed the sweet potatoes for the brûléed mashed sweet potatoes, and last was the beginnings of the prep work for my mashed cauliflower. All of the sides came together just in time for the turkey to come out at 3:30pm. It was set aside to rest while I gave the stuffing it’s final prep of pouring broth over it, putting it in some pans, and baking for 20 minutes. Around four, I started making the gravy, and by 4:30 we were sitting down to eat. Of course, not until I’d taken photos of everything…

Smooth, creamy mashed cauliflower

That turkey tasted just as good as it looked!
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Perfectly sweet-tart cranberry sauce

Waiting for everyone to be ready was torture!Everyone was getting impatient while I photographed everything. As soon as I was done, my dad set to work carving the turkey, and soon we were all sitting around the table with our respective plates of food, ready to give thanks and dig in!

I got compliments throughout the meal on how good everything was. My dad said that it was absolutely the best turkey he’d had in his life, and considering how many turkeys he’s had to compare it to–and the fact that it was the first turkey I ever cooked–I’m quite proud of myself for it. It was a very delicious turkey: incredibly moist but not undercooked, very flavorful, and gorgeously browned on the outside. As for the side dishes, the green beans were perfectly crisp-tender and very well complimented by the sweet red onions and light balsamic-brown sugar glaze; we polished off an entire dish of the stuffing during dinner and very little was left by the time I came back to school last night–we usually have apples in it, but I definitely like the pear so much better, and I already raved about that Italian sausage; my dad said that the mashed cauliflower really could almost pass for mashed potatoes, and it came out really good with chicken bouillon and a little milk and butter; the mashed sweet potatoes were definitely a welcome variation from the dessert-like sweet potato casserole we’ve always had; and the cranberry sauce was fantastic, garnering much approval from my grandma–and everyone else. ;D

Overall, dinner was an absolute success, and I’ve already been named Christmas Dinner Chef this year. Considering it’s only a month away, I can’t believe I already have to keep it in mind to plan the meal! I’ve become quite settled on doing a standing rib roast for the main dish. A bit more complicated to get right than a turkey, I think, but I have confidence my dad will be raving about it just as much as yesterday’s turkey.

The crust was the best partMy mom, grandma, and myself cleaned up once everyone was done eating, and then we had dessert. To be honest, I don’t think I’ll use the same recipe for pumpkin pie again. While it had great texture, it wasn’t sweet enough. The crust was fantastic, though. The pecans were great, nuts make everything better. ;D My mom had also picked up a peach-praline pie from Stop and Shop, and that was quite good. It made up for the lack of sweetness in the pumpkin pie tenfold, heh. There was also some ice cream to have with the pie–Häagen-Dazs Light Dulce de Leche and Rum Raisin. Ohhh, boy.

We all rolled away from the table after that meal. And no one was averse to having leftovers the next day, either, it was all so good.

Tags: baking handbook · brine · buttermilk · cauliflower · cranberry sauce · dinner · food · green beans · marathon · martha stewart · pecan crust · pie · pumpkin · pumpkin bread · sourdough · stuffing · sweet potato · thanksgiving · turkey · turkey sausage

Written by Melody @ 11:32 am Categories: Breads · Desserts · Main Meals · Photos · Side Dishes · Thanksgiving 2005 · Vegetables

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Sweet Potato Scones

Last night I tried some of my sister’s scones leftover from her breakfast, and they necessitated recipe-sharing. Looking over other recipes from the same site, I found one for sweet potato scones that was simply begging to be made! She had sweet potatoes, and I had all of the other ingredients, so the begging ceased and baking commenced.

I halved the recipe that follows but used five teaspoons of sugar, since we really didn’t need that many scones and I prefer mine on the sweet side. I also put all of the butter in at once because I don’t like a too-crispy and browned crust on my scones, and it seemed like it would be good with all of the butter in the dough. On the other hand, I do like the crust to have a teeny bit of sparkle and crunch, so I sprinkled a little sugar on top before baking the scones. It wound up making four good-sized pieces of moist, tender, biscuity goodness that was enough for my sister to taste, me to eat, and then have some leftover for breakfast this morning. The sweet potato probably has the same properties as pumpkin in baked goods–keeping it really moist and soft. Even after quintupling the amount of sugar called for, they still weren’t especially sweet. I thought it was perfect for the recipe–somewhere between “biscuit” and “dessert.” My sister thinks they need to be sweeter. Overall, I was thoroughly pleased by these scones. The texture had that perfect combination of slight crusty outside complimented by soft, moist-crumbly insides; the taste was mildly sweet, slightly sweet potato-y, and buttery-but-not-rich. They were wonderful both fresh out of the oven and cooled.

While I would so make this recipe the same way again, I think I’m also going to try varying it a little–maybe adding more sugar or substituting another sweetener like maple syrup or honey, adding some cinnamon and nutmeg, and maybe trying a little vanilla extract. This recipe can easily be made into a sweet scone. On the other end of the spectrum, I might try making it with the original amount of sugar called for and mixing in more savory ingredients like some grated cheese and herbs. The sweet potato flavor would lend itself well to either a sweet or savory scone, I think.

I’ve also decided to start using Flickr for my photos in this blog. They have some nice features that I can take advantage of, and it’ll give anyone who’s interested the chance to see larger versions of the photos I take. It’s too much of a hassle for me to make multiple sizes to upload here, but Flickr automatically does that for me. We’ll see how much I like it over time.

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Tags: baking · food · recipe · scones · sweet potato

Written by Melody @ 1:47 pm Categories: Breads · Photos · Recipes · Vegetables

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