Bake for the week, Episode 1: Naan

The weekends are a great time to bake or prepare things for the week ahead. This week, we plan on having Chicken Tikka Masala for dinner, so I decided to make some naan to go with it. For those of you who don't know, naan is a yummy Indian flatbread that's usually made by sticking the dough to the inside wall of a tandoori oven. Since I don't have one of those in my kitchen, I use a heavily buttered skillet to fry up my naan.

This recipe makes quite a lot of naan, so I separate out the dough into balls and freeze them for later. When we want to have Indian again, we can pull out how much we want to make, defrost the balls, roll them out and fry them up.

I'll add pictures of the finished naan tomorrow night after we fry it up!

Ingredients

1 pkg   active dry yeast

1 c       warm water (110°)
¼ c       white sugar
3 T       milk
1          egg, beaten
2 t        salt
4 ½ c    (24.75 oz)bread flour
2 t        minced garlic (optional)
¼ c       butter, melted

Directions

1. In a large bowl, dissolve yeast in warm water. Let stand about 10 minutes until frothy. Stir in sugar, milk, egg, salt, and enough flour to make a soft dough. Knead for 6 to 8 minutes on a lightly floured surface, or until smooth. Place dough in a well oiled bowl, cover with a damp cloth, and set aside in a warm place to rise. Let it rise 1 hour, until the dough has doubled in volume.
2. Punch down dough, knead in garlic. Keeping dough covered, divide dough into 16 equal pieces, roll into balls, and place on a tray.

**If you are making this a night or two ahead, stop here, wrap the balls in plastic wrap and place in the fridge. 30 minutes before dinner, take them out and continue with step 3.

3. Cover with plastic wrap, and allow to rise in a warm place until doubled in size, about 30 minutes.

** If you’re going to freeze the naan, stop here and place the whole tray in the freezer until the balls are frozen through. Put frozen dough in a ziplock bag. Allow dough to sit at room temperature for 30 minutes before continuing with step 4.

4. During the second rising, preheat grill or cast iron skillet to high heat.
5. At grill side, roll one ball of dough out into a thin circle. Lightly oil grill or melt butter in pan. Place dough on grill, and cook for about 30 seconds on one side. Brush uncooked side with butter and cook until puffy and brown, about 1-2 minutes. Flip back to side one and cook until browned. Continue with the next piece until all the naan is done.

Sneak Peek at Oscar's Third Birthday Cake

Oscar's third birthday was this weekend. I can't believe he's growing up so fast! I do have plenty of pictures and a great story to write about the cake but it's late on a Sunday evening and I'm exhausted from making said cake and entertaining six sugared up preschoolers. But in order to fulfill my goal of one post a week, I need to get something up here.


Here is the result of the most frustrating baking experience I've had in quite a long time:

He turned out pretty cute after all the hassle... 

Skillet Corn Bread

This Saturday arrived cold and clear and beautiful. The forecasters have been screaming “SNOWMAGEDDON!!!” all week, so we figured if we were going to get snowed in, it was the perfect day for chili.  After breakfast, we threw together our favorite crock-pot chili recipe and set it to cook for the rest of the day.

What goes better with chili than cornbread? Not a lot. I’ve never made it from scratch before, so what better time to try than when I’ve got a blog post to write? None.  My dad just got me an awesome cast iron skillet for Christmas and I’ve yet to break it out, so I figured Skillet Corn Bread was in order.

I must be used to “Northern” corn bread, because the bread I turned out of the pan was less cakey and more savory than I’m used to in cornbread. Apparently those are characteristics of “Southern” corn bread. It was still tasty, though. Next time I’ll try and remember to save some bacon drippings or use butter – the vegetable oil did not impart any flavor to the bread at all. I will also use better cornmeal. The cornmeal really stars in this recipe and my bargain-brand, out of date meal was not very good at it’s role. The texture was really nice, though – soft and moist, but with a hearty grainy-ness.

The snow didn’t arrive until today, but it was still a great night for chili!

Skillet Cornbread

Ingredients

4 t           bacon drippings or vegetable oil

1 c           fresh yellow cornmeal, preferably stone ground

2 t           granulated sugar

½ t          table salt

1 t           baking powder

¼ t          baking soda

1/3 c        water (rapidly boiling)

¾ c          buttermilk

1 lg          egg , beaten lightly

Instructions

1. Adjust oven rack to lower middle position and heat oven to 450 degrees.  Set cast-iron skillet with bacon fat (or vegetable oil) in heating oven.

2. Measure 1/3 cup cornmeal into medium bowl.  Mix remaining cornmeal, sugar, salt, baking powder, and baking soda in small bowl; set aside.

3. Pour boiling water all at once into the 1/3 cup cornmeal; stir to make a stiff mush. Whisk in buttermilk gradually, breaking up lumps until smooth, then whisk in egg.

4. When oven is preheated and skillet very hot, stir dry ingredients into mush mixture until just moistened. Carefully remove skillet from oven. Pour hot bacon fat (or vegetable oil) from the skillet into the batter and stir to incorporate, then quickly pour batter into heated skillet. Bake until golden brown, about 20 minutes. Remove from oven and turn cornbread onto wire rack; cool for 5 minutes, then serve immediately.

Source: America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook

Mini Carrot Cupcakes

Happy New Year!  I’ve made it my goal to post one blog entry a week.  This means I’ll be doing a lot of baking.  My husband loves that idea.  Welcome to the first post of (hopefully 52) posts for 2012

I try bake goodies for everyone’s birthdays at work.  My boss’ birthday was last Tuesday and she requested carrot cupcakes.  I’d made carrot cake before, and I thought carrot cupcakes would be very rich with that recipe, so I decided to make them mini cupcakes instead.  I like this recipe because you can make the batter in the food processor after grating the carrots and not have to clean two appliances. 

The only mini liners I could dig up were Easter ones that were too small for my pan, so I ditched the liners and sprayed the heck out of the pan.  I found that if I sprayed too much, the cupcakes couldn’t get a grip on the edge of the pan when rising and looked funny after baking.  I think next time I will also process the carrots a little with the regular processor blade so the carrot bits are smaller in the batter.

These are pretty tasty on their own, but are even better topped with a dollop of my favorite fluffy cream cheese icing, recipe included below.

Food Processor Mini Carrot Cupcakes

Ingredients

12½ oz  unbleached all-purpose flour (2½ cups)

1¼ tsp   baking powder

1 tsp      baking soda

1¼ tsp   ground cinnamon

½ tsp     ground nutmeg

¹/₈ tsp   ground cloves

½ tsp     table salt

1 lb         medium carrots (6 to 7 carrots), peeled

10½ oz  granulated sugar (1½ cups)

3 ½ oz    packed light brown sugar (½ cup)

4              large eggs

1½ c       vegetable oil , safflower oil, or canola oil

Instructions

1.       Adjust oven rack to middle position; heat oven to 350 degrees. Spray a mini cupcake pan with nonstick cooking spray or line with paper cups.

2.       Whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and salt in large bowl; set aside.

3.       In food processor fitted with large shredding disk, shred carrots (you should get about 3 cups); transfer carrots to bowl and set aside. Wipe out food processor and stick the metal blade in.  Process both sugars and the eggs until frothy and thoroughly combined, about 20 seconds. With machine running, add oil through feed tube in steady stream.  Process until mixture is light in color and well emulsified, about 20 seconds longer.  Scrape mixture into medium bowl.  Stir in carrots and dry ingredients until incorporated and no streaks of flour remain.  Portion about Two tablespoons of batter into each cup and bake until toothpick or skewer inserted into center of cake comes out clean, about 7-8 minutes, rotating pan halfway through baking time. Cool cups in pans for 5 minutes, then turn out onto a cooling rack and let cool completely before frosting.

Source: CooksIllustrated.com

Fluffy Cream Cheese Frosting

Ingredients

12 T        unsalted butter, softened

12 oz      confectioner’s sugar (3 cups)

12 oz      cream cheese, cut into 6 pieces, softened

1 tsp      vanilla extract

Dash      salt

Instructions

1.       With an electric mixer, beat butter and sugar on medium-high speed until fluffy, about 2 minutes.  Add cream cheese, one piece at a time, and beat until incorporated, about 30 seconds.  Beat in vanilla and salt.  Refrigerate until ready to use.

Source: CooksCountry.com