ABC: Honey Oatmeal Bread

It's time for another ABC post and this October's bake is The Weekend Baker's Honey Oatmeal Bread which I really, really loved!  This has got to be the best tasting honey oatmeal bread I've ever tried and I especially loved the pronounced honey flavor and sweetness in the bread given the generous 1/3 cup that's in it.  I've encountered many recipes that claim to be honey breads but I always get puzzled why they would even put "honey" in the title when all they make you add is 2 tablespoons of honey at the most.  I'm glad that this recipe didn't skimp on it and it was so easy to make as well.  It's super delicious on its own that I never even ate it with anything else but I bet this would make excellent French toast.  What I also liked about this bread is that it stayed really moist and soft throughout the 2 days it took us to finish it. I think the reason for this was the use of milk to hydrate the flour instead of water.  The next time I make this I'm turning it into dinner rolls and top the surface with oatmeal flakes.

ABC: Mile-High Vanilla Sponge Cake with Honey-Sweetened Greek Yogurt and Brandied Blackberry Sauce

This month's recipe for the Avid Baker's Challenge is the Mile-High Vanilla Sponge Cake which was one of the cakes that Abby Dodge, author of the "Weekend Baker," fondly remembers eating often during her childhood.  I also have a lot of fond memories of eating this cake when I was a child as my grandmother would bake this every so often and serve it to her weekly mah-jong group along with whipped cream and fresh fruits.  She would even turn the leftovers into other confections which we often snacked on in the afternoons like toasted mamon which is just slices of sponge cake sprinkled with sugar then toasted until crunchy through and through.  The adults would eat this together with their many cups of coffee while us kids enjoyed dunking them in our own tiny mugs of hot chocolate.  On certain occasions, my grandmother would also use untoasted sponge cake crumbs to coat her famous silvanas which everyone in our family loved especially my sister and I who would occasionally sneak in the kitchen to get a few pieces for ourselves LOL.  

ABC: Glazed Apricot-Plum Galette

I don't normally see fresh apricots being sold in our supermarkets over here even during peak season so I was all set to turn Abby Dodge's Glazed Apricot-Plum Galette from her book The Weekend Baker into a peach- or nectarine-plum galette instead.  It was such a lucky coincidence though that as I was scouring the shelves for fresh fruits a few weeks ago, our supermarket, to my delight, had an abundant display of very fresh apricots that I couldn't resist buying some right then and there.  Even the plums were rather plentiful so by the time I got home, I had all of the fruits needed to make the galette which is also ABC's recipe for the month of August.  I was a little unsure of how well these fruits would keep in the fridge so I decided to make the galette a few weeks in advance.

ABC: Classic Fruit Tartlets

Whenever I go to upscale pastry shops I always see these charming fruit tarts or tartlets decoratively placed on the shelves of their refrigerated display cases which never fails to capture my attention because of their vibrant colors and attractive shine.  I can't help but pause and stare at them in admiration and appreciate the way the fruits are carefully positioned on top of the cream and how all their lovely colors complement each other.  Needless to say that I got very excited when I found out that this July's bake for ABC would mean making my own classic fruit tart!  I knew immediately that I wanted it to be colorful--using all the berries that are sweet and delicious this time of the year as well as other tart and colorful fruits that I can find such as kiwis.  Fortunately, our supermarket is currently filled with all of these fruits--all very sweet, juicy and fresh.  I especially love how sweet the strawberries and kiwis are right now!  

ABC: Overnight Brioche Braid

I just adore brioche so I was thrilled when Hanaa selected Abby Dodge's Overnight Brioche Braid for this month's ABC bake.  The recipe is from Abby's book "The Weekend Baker" and I like how she gives suggestions on how to conveniently make this bread by including extra steps -- which is extremely beneficial to people on a time crunch -- like an overnight stay in the fridge during bulk fermentation or during the final proofing of the dough.  Although these steps are optional, I decided to go for the overnight retardation so I could have freshly baked brioche in the morning.  I also read in other bread books that doing this helps develop more flavor and that dividing and shaping the dough while its cold is also more ideal.

I made a brioche cake from Tish Boyle's "The Cake Book" for my bread baketogether (BBT) with Hanaa recently so I was eager to see the differences between the two brioches.  I was very pleased with the outcome of Tish's brioche and I wanted to get the same results with Abby's.  My comparisons may be be compromised though as I used a different flour for Abby's and I recall putting lecithin granules to Tish's brioche which I omitted in Abby's version.  

ABC: Dark Chocolate and Orange Scones

This month's recipe for ABC is for yummy buttery scones found in Abby Dodge's book The Weekend Baker.  Scones seem to be a very popular breakfast item the world over but I must say that I've baked and eaten scones only once in my life (many years ago) and this would be the second time since then.  Abby's recipe certainly showed me how easy they are to make by giving steps that you can do in advance like creating a big batch of scone mix by combining all the dry ingredients and storing them in a large container ahead of time where you can simply get a portion from it to make a single batch of 8 scones.  She also provides a few flavor options which all sound really delicious as well as a recipe that only makes a single batch which is what I used here.

ABC: Buttery Pull-Apart Dinner Rolls

This month's ABC recipe is for buttery pull-apart dinner rolls, one of the yummy breads you can find in the Weekend Baker by Abby Dodge.  This was actually my second attempt at making this -- the first one (a chia seed variation) ended in disaster as my BM cooked the dough during its first rise instead of just proofing it LOL.  Good thing I only made half the recipe so at least not much was wasted.  For this second attempt though, I decided to make the full recipe.

ABC: Emergency Blender Cupcakes

I fully intended to bake these cupcakes during the weekend but other things came up (hubby and kids getting the flu) that I had to postpone making these for a couple of days.  Thankfully, these Emergency Blender Cupcakes from Abby Dodge's The Weekend Baker and the ABC recipe for the month of March was super easy to make!  Wow, I don't think I've ever made cupcakes this quick and using only a wire whisk for mixing!

Having no time to make the fudge icing and having too much a lot of cream cheese in my fridge, I decided to turn these cupcakes into black bottom cupcakes instead which was such a great idea because it's such a delicious combination!  I just love the tartness of the cream cheese paired with chocolate...well I just love anything with cream cheese in it!  I think a lot of other flavors can even be infused in the cream cheese to give the cupcakes more oomph like coffee, dulce de leche, strawberries, etc.

ABC: Glazed Cinnamon Rolls

Since I'd already jump-started my bread baking journey for 2012 with the #Baketogether ~ Peasant Boule a few days ago and now feeling somewhat confident handling yeast again because of it, I decided to make ABC's February recipe -- the Glazed Cinnamon Rolls (also one of Abby Dodge's delicious bread recipes found in her book, The Weekend Baker) -- slightly ahead of schedule. I already had all of the ingredients in my pantry anyway and since I'm having a few guests for brunch tomorrow, I thought that these rolls would be a lovely addition to our meal. That is, if none of us gets too tempted to finish all of them before the day ends!

ABC: Nut-Crusted Chocolate-Banana Swirl Cake

I recently joined the Avid Baker's Challenge (a group of passionate bakers all agreeing to bake a specific recipe once a month from a chosen recipe book) and this year, the group decided to bake 12 recipes from The Weekend Baker by Abigail Johnson Dodge. I still don't have the book yet but Hanaa, the administrator of ABC, has kindly sent me the link to the first recipe for the month of January which is the Chocolate Banana Swirl Cake. I love banana cake and make it all the time (as cupcakes) but have never tried it swirled with dark chocolate and baked in a bundt pan. Needless to say, I was very excited to make this!