The Modern Baker Challenge: Butterscotch Scones

I, like many of you out there, have had a love affair with Butterscotch all my life. As a child, I used to snatch up those little Butterscotch hard candies from Brach's in the yellow wrapper that no one else liked. All buttery and- well, certainly not Scotch-y, as I later would find out.

The thing is, I don't really like butter. Okay, okay, I don't like butter on bread, since the butter just takes over the taste of the bread, and I really dislike how Germans put butter on sandwiches that you get at a bakery. It's funny, because, in the States, you would probably get mayonnaise. When I make sandwiches, I tend to counterbalance the flavors. Mustard on one side, and either Tomato Jam or Fig Jam on the other. Just to get a half-savory sweetness to cut the mustard.

Butterscotch, on the other hand, is almost the polar opposite of mustard. Sweet and buttery and- well- you can't really describe the flavor. It's almost as though you made candy out of butter. Although I'm not a straight-butter fan, I am a fan of butter in things. Pound cake, muffins, a very light coating of butter on sourdough pancakes? Butter caramels, Lemon curd, Butter Pecan Ice Cream? Vegetables sauteed in butter and thyme? Broccoli soup where the ingredients are butter, water and Broccoli? Yes. Yes to all of them.

So, when I found out that The Modern Baker Challenge was making Butterscotch Scones, I jumped on them. I mean, who doesn't love Butterscotch in things?


In case you're wondering, the Butterscotch flavor comes from the butter, cream, and the brown sugar. Though I doubt that creaming them together will give you Pure Butterscotch Heaven (as found on the Smitten), you can certainly try. In the case above, and on the advice of other Modern Bakers, I also added a handful of Butterscotch chips, imported into Germany from the States, just to up the ante.


I have to let you in on a dirty little secret of mine- I don't sift the flour. I used to when I used measuring cups, but now, I just sort of throw the dry ingredients together and just stir with my Zeigefinger. Part of the reason is that my old, really good sifter gave up the ghost, and I replaced it with a really cheap one from IKEA. Unfortunately, you really do get what you pay for, since the sifter can't handle more than a handful of very white flour.


After following a lifetime of recipes, I also tend to skim recipes instead of reading them, unless I'm reading them for fun, in which case I tend to visualize the process. Here, for scones like for many cakes, you mix the dry ingredients together, cut the butter into the flour, and then mix in the almost dry.


Since I don't have a food processor, I tend to do most things by hand. In this case, the eggs and cream are whisked together separately, then poured into the dry-ish ingredients instead of pulsed in a food processor. I have, however, been thinking of getting one, just for the singular purpose of making killer hummus.


When the batter dough looks like it's remotely coming together, you turn it out on to a floured board. You're actually supposed to fold the dough over on itself to give it a final mixing, but, because my bread habits tend to sneak into everything, I kneaded it just a little bit.


The only problem I had with this recipe was the size of the scones.


It makes twelve, where it really should make eighteen.


But since I actually managed to read this part of the recipe, I decided to trust Nick Malgieri and divide each third of dough into a further four.


The flavor was amazing. Though when you compare the scones to Butterscotch hard candy, the concentrated flavor of the candy always wins.


But if you can't get Butterscotch candy, and, like me, you never eat ice cream at home, which sort of precludes you from making Butterscotch sauce in any form, these are definitely what you need.

Although on second thought, some Butterscotch sauce drizzled on these might not be half-bad. Would that be overkill? Well, considering there is a recipe for Triple Chocolate Scones in the book, I would say that Triple Butterscotch Scones would fit right in with the rest of the quick breads.

For more of these wonderful scones, check out these other Modern Baker Lovers (though no Jonathan Richman, so don't ask!):

Phyl from Of Cabbages and King Cakes

Andrea from Family & Food & Other Things

Heather from Tease-spoon of Sugar

Renee from Every Pot and Pan is Dirty

Abby from Stir It! Scrape It! Mix It! Bake It!

My Bread Year: Whole-Wheat Brioche

I hadn't intended on making Brioche. But one day I woke up and was craving it so much that I had to have it. Instead of cracking open a recipe, I decided to just find it. After all, I just wanted a piece, no?

The bakery in my street has pretty amazing bread, but their brioche is, well, not-so-amazing. It's made in muffin tins and, even though it has the tête, it's just not what I wanted. I wanted something specific, something just like- no- exactly like the buttery richness of the brioche from the beginning of the Bread Baker's Apprentice Challenge.

I wanted that brioche.

But I didn't make it. I spent about another week trying to find some- which is near impossible here in Berlin- before I remembered that Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads has a recipe for Whole Wheat Brioche.

The recipe follows Reinhart's Epoxy Method, where two unlike doughs meet to create a stronger better dough. The soaker is essentially the water and salt, and probably serves as an extended autolyse of the flour, as well as to develop flavor. The starter or biga has a minimal amount of yeast, and also develops flavor, but also allows the yeast to multiply so that less yeast is needed overall. In this case, the soaker consisted of scalded milk, butter, flour and salt. The starter had the eggs, along with flour and yeast.

Both mixtures were difficult to work with because they were so thick. I wanted more liquid in the mixtures to make them easier to work with, but that didn't happen. I just mixed as well as I could and stuck the two mixtures in the fridge.

After a night and day of refrigeration, I took them out and mixed them together. Because they were so cold, they refused to mix, and I had to allow them to come to room temperature before they would even merge.

I sort of messed up in this part. After the mixing, the dough is supposed to go directly into the molds. I let it rise in a bowl before checking on the time in the book. I molded them about two hours into the first and only rise.

So, because this is supposed to be My Bread Year, overbrowned warts and all, I am presenting all breads as they came out. You may remember my Stollen disaster. No? Oh, maybe that's because I'm getting ahead of myself.

The electric oven I work with has an exposed element at the top, so breads usually come out browner than I usually want. Somehow, I seem to never learn my lesson, and usually let things become darker than usual. Though the dark bits were still delicious, the brioche would have looked even better if it hadn't been so dark.

But the bottom came out great!

As for the taste? Heavenly.

Well, at least when the bread was warm. It tasted completely like pancakes. The whole grain was sweet and nutty and the butter was just enough to make the crumb so tender. It was amazing.

The bad part? Well, when cool, the bread was dry and tasted a bit bland. I'm not sure why. Perhaps because the recipe has very little sugar, or because there wasn't enough butter.

Or, if I may completely take a wild guess. When warm, the bread was probably releasing more aromas, which helped make it taste better.

I'm still craving brioche, but not as much. I even paid a visit to Galeries Lafayette, thinking that if I couldn't find brioche there, I would give up. I found some, and it was good, but it wasn't the exact brioche I wanted. Again, not enough butter.

The Daring Bakers Challenge January 2010: Nanaimo Bars

So my dealings with Canadians up until a few years ago had been of disbelief. What? Canada? That's a completely different world. Of course, I never said this, but rather, "You're Canadian? Really?" Until I began to work with them, and my whole perception changed. Canadians are awesome. I am just going to repeat that in case you skipped over that sentence. Canadians are awesome.

One of my favorite radio shows, This American Life, even had an episode dedicated to Canadians, called "Who's Canadian?" in which they out several famous Canadians. I won't say who, but prepare yourself to say, "Really? Canadian?"

Aside from a recent New Yorker article arguing that Poutine is rapidly becoming Canada's national dish, I have no clue when it comes to Canadian specialties. So it was quite surprising to find out that the January Daring Baker's Challenge was Nanaimo Bars. Don't worry, I hit backspace a few times while typing that out, so you'll also get some time to adjust to the name.

The January 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Lauren of Celiac Teen. Lauren chose Gluten-Free Graham Wafers and Nanaimo Bars as the challenge for the month. The sources she based her recipe on are 101 Cookbooks and www.nanaimo.ca. You can get the recipe here, though I'll post my measurements in metric at the end of this post.


I typically never, ever buy this kind of flour, though after reading Mark Ruhlmann's Ratio, I think I'll have to reconsider. Type 405 flour is low in protein and is taken from the very center of the endosperm of the wheat, so it's the whitest of the white flours, and is actually the most common. You can normally get 2kg for about a Euro in any discount supermarket, but I spent a little more to get a half kilo of a slightly better quality.


If participating in the BBA Challenge has taught me anything it's that having a good mise en place makes things go faster. It's also taught me that taking photos of your baking makes the whole process last as long as it would if you hadn't had a mise in place.


Here's the mise en place for the Graham Crackers. The only odd ingredient is the brown sugar, which is not the same as Brauner Zucker in Germany. Good brown sugar, the kind with healthy molasses mixed back in, can be found in almost any Asia Laden in Berlin. Why? No clue, but that's where you get it.


One of the problems I had with the recipe instructions was its high reliance on a food processor. I've generally been against them, but after having this small attachment to my hand-held blender, I might start looking at them, particularly since I love making hummus.

I did want to make the Graham Crackers gluten-free, but I could not find the flours in time, and the 405 was all-too-readily available. I think maybe next time I'll try Whole Spelt, just to see if there is a difference in flavor.


The liquid ingredients are mixed together. Honey, milk, and the ever-beautiful Vanilla floating atop the milk.


Mashing the dry ingredients is supposed to happen in the food processor, but I just didn't have the capacity. Instead, I relied on my Made-in-the-Czech-Republic Danish Dough Whisk.


I gathered the dough together as though making a pie, and refrigerated it overnight.


The next day, I rolled out the dough.


Put the flat pieces of dough on my baking sheet...


And poked holes in the crackers using a pair of coffee stirrers.


So the actual Nanaimo Bars- remember, we're making Nanaimo Bars. So the Nanaimo bars require Graham Cracker crumbs. One of the helpful suggestions was to crush them in a resealable bag. It worked wonderfully.


Although you can't tell from this picture the Graham crackers themselves came out rather brown. I think it is because I used my very heavy (and very dark) blue steel sheet pans. The bake time was way shorter than the 25 minutes the recipe called for.


Again, the mise en place: unsweetened flaked coconut, Sarotti Cocoa Powder, Graham Cracker crumbs (in all their dark glory), egg, butter, sliced almonds, and sugar.


You basically melt the butter with the sugar and the cocoa in a double boiler, and add the egg to thicken. When it's all thick and liquidy, you add the crumbs, coconut, and almonds. Stir until it all comes together into a wonderful crumbly consistency.


And then press down to make a uniform base for the bars. I used a rectangular Pyrex dish instead of the square one called for in the recipe.


The next step is my discovery of buttercream frosting. The mise en place is pictured above. 254 glorious grams of powdered sugar are called for in the recipe, but I used a 250g box since I just had it lying around.


The ingredients are creamed together. If the butter had been at room temperature, I would have put everything into my DLX and cranked it up to make the frosting. But I thought it would be a bit much to use a 8 quart capacity mixer to make a small amount of frosting. Maybe once I get through Ratio and bake a few cakes.


The frosting is spread over the first layer. That's two out of three.


The last step involves a chocolate frosting layer. I melted 85% Lindt chocolate with butter.


Though I'm by no means a chocoholic, this is is one of my favorite things to do with chocolate.


The mixture is then spread over the top of the two layers and chilled.

Here's where this post takes another turn. This batch was taken to the last day of work celebration of one of my friends and no pictures survive. Luckily, one of Amy's colleagues is having a last day on Friday, so I made these again.


This is what they look like in the Pyrex dish just waiting to be devoured. Plus, the first photo, way at the top, is what a special round bar, just for me, looked like before I discovered just how good this recipe is. You will too.

The recipe for the bars themselves is as follows, lifted wholesale from the Daring Baker's Challenge Page, but listed in metric measurements from my notes. The recipe for the gluten-free Graham Crackers can be found at the Daring Baker's recipe page for this month, as well as at Celiac Teen's wonderful post.

Nanaimo Bars

Ingredients:

For Nanaimo Bars — Bottom Layer

115g Unsalted Butter
50 g Granulated Sugar
40g of your best Unsweetened Cocoa
1 Large Egg, Beaten
160 g Gluten Free Graham Wafer Crumbs (See this recipe)
55g Almonds (Any type, Finely chopped- My first bars used sliced almonds, the second ones used slivered almonds)
100g Coconut (Shredded, sweetened or unsweetened) Mine was finely shredded.

For Nanaimo Bars — Middle Layer

115g Unsalted Butter
40g Heavy Cream
2 tablespoons Vanilla Custard Powder (I used Vanilla Pudding powder because it was all I could get)
1 box/250g Icing Sugar

For Nanaimo Bars — Top Layer

115g of your best Semi-sweet chocolate (in my case, 85% Lindt chocolate)
28g Unsalted Butter

Directions:

1. For bottom Layer: Melt unsalted butter, sugar and cocoa in top of a double boiler. Add egg and stir to cook and thicken. Remove from heat. Stir in crumbs, nuts and coconut. Press firmly into an ungreased 8 by 8 inch pan.
2. For Middle Layer: Cream butter, cream, custard powder, and icing sugar together well. Beat until light in colour. Spread over bottom layer.
3. For Top Layer: Melt chocolate and unsalted butter over low heat. Cool. Once cool, pour over middle layer and chill.