Blueberry Skillet Pancake

My friend picked some fresh blueberries so I had to make this recipe in the book. I decided to use Rye flour instead as I knew it would have the same nutty flavour as the buckwheat flour called for. I know the brown butter, Rye flour and cardamom may seem optional, but they are 100% necessary. This was easily one of the best pancakes I’ve ever had! 10/10

Brown the butter
Blend the AP flour, Rye flour, milk, eggs, sugar, salt and cardamom
Stream in the brown butter while blending
Cook 1/3 of the batter to provide a base for the blueberries
Phenomenal

Oat Pecan Brittle Cookies

I made these cookies back in December of 2020 and they were fantastic. So I wanted to make them again for this blog. These and Claire’s chocolate chip cookies are tied for the best I’ve ever had. The brown butter gives them both a great depth of flavor and she hits a perfect balance between crunchy and chewy.

Toast your pecans for a better flavour! I added some Hazelnuts too
Make some brown butter
Make a brittle with the toasted nuts. Half gets blended into the dry ingredient, half of it goes into the cookies whole
10/10. I took them camping and they were fantastic!

St. Louis Gooey Butter Cake

I was confused at first why this was in the breakfast section of the book. But after trying it, it’s really not that sweet. So it’s perfect for breakfast.

It’s a thick batter that goes on the dough and then gets baked. It has an incredibly unique texture!

No sugar goes in the bottom layer
Mix the ingredients, and then add in the butter and remaining flour
It should come together as a sticky dough
Whipping cream, an egg yolk and vanilla extract for the top layer
As it cools, the top layer will sink
10/10!

Cherry Cream Cheese Danishes and Kouign-amann

Both the danishes and the kouign-amann use the same dough, so I made one recipe of the dough, and a half recipe of each.
Proof #1
This was my first time ever laminating dough before. You use the same process for Croissants. So this was good practice. It’s essentially making layers of butter in the dough by folding the butter in the dough lots of times. But you have to keep it all cold so the butter doesn’t melt. You roll out the dough and fold it into 3. That’s one “turn”. You do 2 turns, cool it down, then 2 more, then chill again, then bake.
Sealing the butter block
Turn #1
Making the raspberry compote while the dough chills
On turns 3 and 4, you sprinkle the dough with sugar for the kouign-amann dough
Cut into 3 inch x 3 inch squares
The kouign-amann
Start of the danishes
The kouign-amann were amazing. The only thing I’d change is that I’d make them larger
The raspberry cream cheese danishes. Also fantastic!

Cherry Pie

Cherries are in season so it’s time for a pie!
Clairs steps for the pie dough. You want to work fast so that the butter doesn’t melt and seperate. If it stays cold and in discreet chunks, you’ll get a much flakier dough.
Very cold butter added to the flour and crumbled. You want to aim for pea sized clumps of butter
After adding the water. You want to add as little water as possible to prevent gluten formation. Again leading to a flakier dough.
Chill the dough after kneading so the butter stays cool.
Definitely a 9/10. The almond extract and lemon zest in the filling gave it great flavour. The only thing I’d change is I’d roll it thinner as the dough on the bottom was a bit thick, and I’d add some more cornstarch so that it isn’t as runny.

Thrice Baked Rye Cookies

This recipe had 2 really interesting techniques. The first I had done once before, and that’s to toast the flour. So that’s an equal amount of AP and Rye flour toasted. The flour clumps after baking, so you definitely want to sieve it after.
This was the other technique, and this was brand new to me. Sieving hardboiled egg yolks into the dry ingredients, as opposed to adding eggs to the wet ingredients. It supposedly makes the cookies more fluffy and tender.
Post bake #1. I cut them a bit large 😅
Post bake 2
I don’t know if sieving egg yolks made a difference or not. I’d have to try them with regular eggs side by side. But the toasted flours definitely added a nice nutty-ness to the cookies. 7.5/10

Brioche Apricot Tart

Last brioche recipe in the book!
Mix it all until it forms a shaggy dough
This is after adding the butter. You want the butter to be room temperature so that it incorporates into the dough. Likewise, you want your eggs at room temperature as well so that it doesn’t solidify the butter. And you want to add the butter very slowly. Over 15 minutes at least
Post proof 1
Stretched out!
The creamy base called for creme fraiche, egg yolk and sugar. My store had no creme fraiche. So I combined cream cheese, yoghurt, and a bit of almond extract and it was great! (an almond syrup goes on at the end, so I figured it’d be a good flavour to incorporate elsewhere)
The tart only used half the brioche dough, so I made a loaf with the other half
Served up with some of the leftover lemon curd and apricot/earl grey jam from last week. 8/10
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