Liz Denys

Earlier this week, I made bacon cheddar scallion biscuits because I had been craving an especially savory breakfast bread option for those mornings that you wake up a little bit later than you'd like. Nothing too fancy, just fifteen traditional country biscuits except that I replaced some of the butter with bacon fat and added bacon, scallions, and a lot of extra sharp cheddar cheese.

But then late Friday night rolled around: I had already eaten dinner, but wanted just a tiny bit more food. Naturally, I was craving a burger, but knew that I couldn't handle a full portion. I had almost resigned myself to making myself a miniature burger with all the fixings but without a bun, but glanced over towards the toaster oven and noticed eight perfectly sized bacony, cheddary, buttery biscuits - practically waiting to become burger buns.

Putting caramelized onions, bacon, and cheddar on the burger along with the already flavor-packed biscuit felt like overkill, so instead, I left the bacon to the biscuit and put very finely diced onions along with slightly more grated extra sharp cheddar cheese in the burger patty itself. Well, that's a bit of a lie, a tablespoon or so more of grated cheddar ended up on top of the burger patty because cheese is kind of just that good. When the burgers seemed about done, I very, very lightly toasted (they had a lot of cheese in them) the bacon cheddar scallion biscuits.

All in all, these sliders were quite rich, but hardly overbearingly so. And quite delicious. I woke up the next day wanting them again (or maybe I just really have immense, insatiable burger cravings), so I made them for brunch the next day, too.

It's beginning to feel a lot like fall: the weather is finally cooling down, leaves are browning, and pumpkin spice lattes are abundant.

Being a coffee fan, I caved about a year ago and bought pumpkin spice latte syrup. It made for a delicious replica of the coffee shop classic, but wouldn't it just be so much better with pumpkin pulp and spices instead of a sugary syrup?

After a little over twenty minutes in front of a stove and a couple of minutes with a hand mixer, cream, vanilla, and confectioners' sugar, we got to enjoy these:

The pumpkin puree made them thicker than your average pumpkin spice latte, so they didn't froth as well as the average latte. However, they were earthier, while still sweet, and I'd say more delicious than any pumpkin spice latte I've ever gotten in a coffee shop and certainly more delicious than any I've made at home with a syrup before.

I made twice the recipe below so that I could put the glass bottle full of extra latte in the fridge. They were also delicious cold the next day.

Pumpkin spice latte

Ingredients:

• 2 cups milk (preferably whole or 2%)
• 4 tablespoons pureed pumpkin
• 2 tablespoons brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon a combination of ground ginger, cloves, nutmeg, allspice, and cinnamon (if you don't know how much to use of each, use equal parts)
• 3 shots espresso

Preparation:

1. Combine milk, pumpkin, and brown sugar in a small saucepan over medium heat. Cook, stirring constantly, until steaming.
2. Remove from heat. Add in vanilla and the various spices. Blend until foamy. (An immersion blender is easiest, but you can transfer to a regular, counter-top blender as well.) If you don't mind the pumpkin being a bit thicker, you can also simply whisk the mixture together until well combined.
3. Pour mixture over espresso and serve.

Yields two servings.

Every time I come across this photograph on my computer, I am impressed by how simultaneously dull and sharp the sky was that day in San Francisco. When editing this photograph I took now about three and a half years ago, I only flattened the sky slightly and didn't touch up the trees or recolor the rest of the frame at all.

It remains my favorite photograph that I have taken to date.

When I had come across an article on "sneaking" citrus almond poundcake out of a food processor in Mark Bittman's column, I realized that it had been too long since I had even eaten poundcake. Further, this one was flavored like oranges and marzipan - two of my favorite flavors - so I had to make it.

I couldn't find 7-ounce tubes of almond paste in any of the grocery stores near me and ended up increasing the recipe to use up all of the 10-ounce can I was able to find. I think that next time I will freeze about half of the cakes as having that much of such a dense cake around is fairly overwhelming - even with the help of friends.

Their original recipe also called for a citrus soak made by dissolving sugar into lemon and orange juices. I found adding this to the cakes made them sweeter than I really wanted. I suppose I don't have as much of a sweet tooth as most because others commented that they would have preferred a glaze to the soak. I have omitted the soak from the recipe below, but doubled the amount of citrus zests because that worked well when I made this poundcake.

Citrus almond poundcake

Adapted from Grandaisy Bakery via Mark Bittman

Ingredients:

• 16 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cubed, plus more for pans
• Flour (or Baker's Joy) for pans
• 1/3 cups fresh lemon juice
• 3/4 cups fresh orange juice
• 3 cups granulated sugar
• 10 ounces almond paste
• 10 large eggs
• 6 teaspoons lemon zest
• 6 teaspoons orange zest
• 3 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 1/4 cups cake flour
• 1 1/8 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon and a pinch of salt

Preparation:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Butter and flour (or spray one of my favorite tricks, Baker's Joy, on) an 8-cup bundt pan as well as a 9" by 5" loaf pan.
2. Put almond paste and sugar in a stand mixer (or food processor if you do not have one) and process until well combined.
3. Add the butter and continue processing until light and fluffy.
4. With the machine running, add eggs one at a time along with the zest and vanilla, and continue to mix (or process) until smooth.
5. Stop the machine, add the flour, baking powder and salt, and pulse a few times - just until the dry ingredients are integrated (be careful not to over process, or the cake will become tough).
6. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake until golden, about 1 hour and 10 minutes. When a skewer or thin-bladed knife inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean, remove the cake from the oven and let cool slightly. Let the cake cool, then cut into slices.

Yields 13 to 16 servings.

I've been getting into baking bread a lot lately instead of focusing more on the sweet and pastry side of things. While I've been enjoying making fresh sourdough from fresh sourdough starter and love the end results, I sometimes find that basic breads are a lot of kneading (read: hard on my wrists) with little creativity (read: delicious but a bit boring to make).

But then something really similar to this pretty loaf I made earlier today popped up in my RSS feed:

Naturally, I decided that I had to make it; I was dying to make a bread with such a beautiful and creative shape. However, I didn't have sun-dried tomatoes already, so I faked my own in an hour by taking canned diced tomatoes with Vidalia onions, cooking off the juices on the stove for about 15 minutes on medium high heat, and then baking them at 350 degrees in the oven for 45 minutes. I also didn't have any fresh basil, as its prices have recently sky-rocketed, so I opted to use homemade pesto (fresh basil, garlic, parmesan cheese, romano cheese, pine nuts, salt, pepper, and extra virgin olive oil) that I had previously frozen dramatically instead and nix the garlic powder in the original recipe. Also, considering how much I love cheese, I added a little more in and use only mozzarella and parmesan in addition to the cheeses in the pesto.

Here are images of the step-by-step:

Creating the figure-8 shape wasn't the least bit difficult; it's all in rolling the dough into a tube and making one strategic cut before one simple twist. Though, I found that it's really hard to roll out the dough before adding the toppings if it just hasn't fully doubled in size yet. If you want to play along at home, my version of the recipe follows. Next time I make this shape of bread, I'm going to fill it with caramelized onions and a touch of white cheddar.

Sun-dried tomato and pesto pane bianco

Adapted from Dianna Wara via King Arthur Flour. They also show off a lot of step by step pictures on their blog.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup warm water
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 4 teaspoons instant yeast
• 1 cup warm low-fat milk
• 1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• 2 large eggs
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 6 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cup sun-dried tomatoes, oil dried
• 3/4 cup pesto
• 1 1/2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
• 1/2 cups grated Parmesan cheese

Preparation:

1. Combine the water, sugar, yeast, milk, olive oil, eggs, salt, and flour, and mix and knead until you've made a cohesive, soft dough that forms a smooth ball. Place the dough in a bowl greased with about a tablespoon or two of olive oil, and turn to grease the top of the bread. Cover and let rise in a warm place until doubled, about 45 minutes.
2. Meanwhile, thoroughly drain the sun-dried tomatoes; lay them on a paper towel to absorb any excess oil.
3. Line two baking sheets with parchment. Gently deflate the dough and divide it in half. Roll one piece into a roughly 22" x 8 1/2" rectangle. Spread on half of the pesto, and sprinkle on half of the tomatoes and cheeses.
4. Starting with one long edge, roll the dough into a log the long way. Pinch the edges to seal.
5. Place the log seam-side down on a baking sheet. Using a knife or kitchen shears, start 1/2" from one end and cut the log lengthwise down the center about 1" deep, to within 1/2" of the other end.
6. Keeping the cut side up, form an "S" shape. Tuck both ends under the center of the "S" to form a "figure 8" shape; pinch the ends together to seal. Cover and let rise in a warm place until double, 45 to 60 minutes. Repeat with the remaining dough.
7. While the loaves are rising, preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
8. Bake the first loaf for 35 to 40 minutes. Make sure to tent the loaf with foil after 15 to 20 minutes to prevent over-browning. Bake the remaining loaf.
9. Remove loaves from their pans; cook on racks. Store any leftovers well-wrapped, at room temperature.

Yields about 2 large loaves of bread.