Chocolate Swirl Babka Muffin Buns # Baking Partner's Challenge

Babka, as most of you know, is a traditional Easter coffee bread from Europe. Apparently, babka is also the word for grandmother in Polish...  which is why a traditional babka bread was usually baked in a fluted round mold with a center tube and was said to resemble a women's full skirt from centuries past. The babkas as we know them today are elaborately flavored and heavily downsized... They are strueseled, swirled in chocolate and cinnamon and baked in ordinary loaf pans.. This version, nevertheless delicious, is believed to have descended from the Eastern European Jewish tradition.

Julekake # Eggless Baking Group

Julekake is a Norwegian Christmas bread flavored with cardamom, raisins and candied citron. It is usually sweeter and flatter than a regular bread and like most holiday breads its dough is enriched with milk, butter and eggs. Traditionally this bread made with all purpose flour, but when Priya Srinivasan of Enveetu Kitchen challenged us, the Eggless Baking Group, to bake an eggless version of it, I decided to get ahead of the challenge and make a whole grain eggless version of it..

I had initially decided to make the bread using whole wheat and all-purpose flour in the ratio 2:1.. With that proportion the dough felt tough so I adjusted by adding extra water and all-purpose flour till the dough texture felt just right. Following the pointers from The Kitchn on How to make Softer and Fluffier Whole wheat bread, I added an extra tablespoon of butter to the dough, kneaded the dough first with hand, allowed the hand-kneaded dough to rest for 20-30 minutes before kneading and poofing it in the bread machine. I am not sure which of the above tricks had worked but I was delighted with the way the loaf turned out... soft and delicious.

Candied citron or citron were unavailable in the stores so I substituted that with homemade candied lemon peel...

Homemade Candied Lemon Peel 

The candied lemon peel were a wonderful addition and I am so glad that I decided to make some at the last moment. Along with the cardamom and raisins, they made the bread slices taste like slices of a holiday cake. Though most Norwegian sites suggested a dab of butter on Julekake, we, at our place loved the bread as it is. Toasted.. but with no extra butter.

Brown Sugar-Raisin Bread

Food gawker and Taste-spotting are pretty addictive... don't you think ? Once your first photograph gets accepted you want all your food photographs to appear there.  One.It invites traffic. Two. It is strangely satisfying to know that a group of experts consider your food to be as gawk-worthy as you thought it was... But with that first acceptance comes the next stage in a bloggers life .. the big chase... the one that sets a blogger running from one window to another  for that perfect streak of light. The frustration grows when the sun refuses to budge and finally the blogger has to settle for less. It was like that for me yesterday. It was raining cats and dogs and I just could not manage a well-lit-gawk-worthy shot... frustrated, I called up mom and she reminded me of this Brown Sugar-Raisin Bread.....

Back in October, I had baked this loaf along with Joyce, Lena and Zoe. It turned out great. Pretty. Soft and fluffy. We loved it. So I made a second loaf for my sister. Her in-laws were visiting at that time and they were pretty impressed by it. Her mother-in-law immediately took the recipe from me and in one of the recent family gatherings told my mother what a good baker I had become :)  It felt good to be complimented by an ace baker as her..  so I thought it wouldn't be such a bad idea to publish this recipe even though the photographs aren't so great....

Now the recipe that won me praise.... Brown Sugar-Raisin Bread... a bread that is great for gifting, or sharing at festive breakfasts or brunch. The original recipe is from Wiiliam-Sonoma. I tweaked it to bake an eggless loaf.

Credit Crunch Munch Zucchini Bread Loaf

It was the day before we were about to leave for a work vacation and there were still two zucchinis left. 

I had bought them when they were cheap but had not managed using the whole lot. the loaf for the night was yet to be made. so i thought zucchini bread. but the recipe called for milk. and there was just enough for my son's after dinner sip. so a replacement was required. of course i could use yogurt but other than the flavored ones which the little one has, there was no other in the fridge. so i decided to use the peach flavored one, the one he likes the least, and to overcome the peachy flavor i added half a  onions, some ginger and herbs to the dough. the result. well it was quite a loaf. we enjoyed it that night with our soup and took the left overs with us for the way. so everything fitted just right and i was a happy mother/wife :) 

Get Your Chef On ~ Chocolate : Marbled Chocolate Brioche Loaf

Well it is time for yet another GYCO Challenge Reveal ! This month 

Jen of Four Mars and One Venus and

Julie of White Lights on Wednesday

challenged us to create a chocolaty delight. 

though there were numerous chocolate recipes to choose from, it took me a while to decide what i wanted to make for this round of the challenge... and it was Irvin Lin's brilliant photographs that made me finally decide on the 

Marbled Chocolate Brioche Loaf.

it was a good decision because this loaf baked me happy.  it looked gorgeous and tasted divine. 

in fact we were so delighted by how the loaf turned out that following the same recipe i baked a second loaf the next day, this time a chocolate swirl brioche, and took it for my brother's family. needless to say they loved the took of the fancy loaf and were more than happy to dive into it right away. so a big thanks to Jen and Julie for this months challenge. I can now bake marbled and swirled Chocolate Brioche loaves at home ! 

now the recipe of the loaves 

as adapted from Eat the Love and The Bread Lover's Bread Machine Cookbook

Marbled Chocolate Brioche Loaf  (Recipe for a 2 pound loaf )

ingredients

for the brioche dough

• 1/2 cup milk
• 2 large eggs
• 2 egg yolks
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 2 3/4 cups all purpose flour
• 4 tbsp sugar
• 1 tbsp orange juice
• 1 tsp sea salt
• 21/4 tsp bread machine yeast
• 10 tablespoons of unsalted butter

for the chocolate layer

• 1/3 cup semisweet chocochips
• 1 tbsp orange juice
• 1 tbsp cocoa powder
• 3 tbsp all purpose flour
• 11 cloves (spice) + 1 inch cinnamon stick, ground

• 1 egg for egg wash
• sugar for sprinkling on top

what i did

1. i made the brioche dough in the bread machine. for that I all the ingredients expect the butter in the machine pan and  programmed it for the dough cycle. 
2. when the machine started on the second knead I added 2 tablespoons of the butter and restarted the dough cycle. as the butter started getting incorporated in the dough I handed another 2 tablespoons of butter and continued this way till all the butter was incorporated into dough. i then let the dough cycle complete. 
3. when the machine beeped at the end of the cycle i inverted the dough into a plastic container and divided the dough into 3 equal parts. next i put 1/3 of the dough back into the bread machine pan along with the ingredients for the chocolate layer. again i programmed the machine for the dough cycle and let it run till all the ingredients were well combined and a smooth chocolaty dough rode on the blade of the pan, about 10 minutes. 
4. i then stopped the machine and stretched the chocolate dough to a 11x6 inch rectangle over a plastic sheet. i then put half of the brioche dough on top of the spread out chocolate layer and stretched it to the  same size. next inverting the two layers on another plastic sheet I put the remaining brioche dough on top of the chocolate layer and stretched it to the  same size.
   
   then placing the sandwiched dough in a plastic container i covered it with a plastic cling wrap and transferred the container to the refrigerator. 
5. 7 hours later, i took out the sandwiched dough from the refrigerator, cut out 1 1/2 x 1/2 inch rectangles from it. then piling the rectangles together in a loaf pan, i covered the pan with a kitchen towel and let the dough double in size. this took about 2 1/2 hours. 
6. once the dough doubled i preheated the oven to 400 degrees F, then egg washed the loaf, sprinkled some sugar on top and in the preheated oven, baked the loaf for 20 minutes. then turning down the oven temperature to 350 degrees F I baked the loaf for another 10 minutes until surface looked golden brown.

i waited for 30 minutes before taking the loaf out of the pan and cut out the first slice after the loaf had cooled down completely. 

Swirled Chocolate Brioche Loaf (Recipe for a 11/2 pound loaf)

for the brioche dough

• 1/3 cup milk
• 2 large eggs
• 1 egg yolks
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 2 cups all purpose flour
• 3 tbsp sugar
• 2 tsp orange juice
• 3/4 tsp sea salt
• 1 3/4 tsp bread machine yeast
• 7 tablespoons of unsalted butter

for the chocolate layer

• 5 tbsp semisweet chocochips
• 2 tsp orange juice
• 2 tsp cocoa powder
• 3 tbsp all purpose flour 
• 8 cloves (spice) + 1 inch cinnamon stick, ground

• 1 egg for egg wash
• sugar for sprinkling on top

what i did

for the swirled brioche loaf i proceeded in the same way as for the marbled loaf except that in step 5, after taking out the dough from the refrigerator, i rolled it out with the rolling pin then folded it as shown in "1st fold"...

then rolled it out again and folded the dough as shown in "2nd fold."i then cut out 1 1/2 x 1/2 inch rectangles from the folded dough and proceeded as above.

the dough before and after the rise...

so those were my gorgeous Chocolate Brioche Loaves. Hope you had as much fun reading about it as i had baking and eating them. Wish me luck for the Challenge and do visit the other delicious entries for this GYCO Chocolate challenge at .....

Four Marrs and One Venus &  White Lights on Wednesday

Until next time...  take care..

These loaves are being Yeastspotted. 
Also sharing these at a couple of weekly food events.

Plantain Oatmeal Bread with Walnuts & Strawberry Jam

The other day I spotted plantain at the local grocery store. Excited at the prospect of making some plantain chips I picked up a packet and the following day tried baking chips. Oh God ! that was such a mistake ! With my first batch coming out of the oven I realized that things weren't going so well so readjusting the oven temperatures i put in the next batch. only to realize minutes later that  certain savories are best enjoyed when dipped in copious amounts of sin.  else you end up chewing leathery chips rather than crunching them. so i left the rest of the plantains just like that planning to come back to them in a few days. and when days rolled to weeks the plantains became too ripe for chips and had to be used up in other recipes.  and since it was my bread-baking day i decided to use one of them in place of banana in Banana Oatmeal Bread while i saved the other for a recipe i had bookmarked. 

Last Saturday, following the recipe from Beth Hensperger's Cookbook The Bread Lover's Bread Machine Cookbook, I had made the Banana Oatmeal Bread with Macadamia Nuts(Pg 444).  We really enjoyed that bread. so I naturally turned to that recipe for the Plantain Bread. I made a few minor changes here and there keeping the basic recipe intact. however I would like to mention here that when baking the bread with plantain it is fine if one uses less yeast because this loaf swelled up a lot more in comparison to the banana bread and therefore that noticeable dip that you can see in the picture below.  This is a sweet loaf and its slices are best enjoyed when microwaved for 20 seconds and served with butter or jam. We tried it in cheese sandwich too, but that didn't work so well. so essentially this is a breakfast bread.. 

and since we were at the breakfast table i thought i'll share my jam recipe as well. Its a strawberry jam that i made last week using Ina Garten's recipe as a guideline.. I used jaggery instead of sugar and a hint of salt . and that kind of signatured a Grandma's Home-made  label on the Jam :) 

 i now the recipes....

Partybrot

Bread Baking Day is a monthly event created by Zorra of 1x umrühren bitte aka kochtopf and Cindy of cindystar blog is hosting it this month. As part of the event, a theme is chosen for the month and everyone interested bakes a bread that is in tune with the theme. for April Cindy decided on Breads with Seeds and Flakes. and as soon as i saw it i knew what i was going to bake. Partybrot. of course.  

Partybrot is a special Swiss-German bread made up of rolls from different types of doughs that are hand-shaped and placed together in a round baking pan. they are then sprinkled with seeds and baked and served at parties and get-togethers. I had wanted to bake this bread ever since i first saw its image in Tom Lacalamita's Ultimate Bread Machine Cookbook. the recipe in his book recommended the combination of Pain Paisan and Burebrot. since i am new to bread making and make my doughs in the bread machine, i worried that the first dough would probably over rise by the time  i get the second one done and then the bread as a whole wouldn't be so good. however from the recipe of Spelt and Einkorn PartyBrot given in Bread Experience blog  i learnt that over-rising can be done off by simply allowing the first dough to slow rise in the refrigerator. she also mentioned that bread baked from dough retarded in the fridge for a while always tastes better... oh. of. course. why had i not thought about this earlier. probably because my first attempt with ciabatta wasn't a huge success. but thats a story for another day.. 

anyway relieved that no harm in the form of over rising would be caused to my brot i then set about kneading the doughs in my bread machine. in my first attempt i made a bread using the recipe from Bread Experience, only substituting all-purpose-flour for spelt in the milk rolls and whole wheat flour for Einkorn in the wheat rolls. the result was nice...

but i wasn't completely satisfied since the whole wheat rolls were slightly more dense than how i would have liked them. so on my second attempt, while i kept the milk roll recipe untouched, i decided to replace the wheat roll recipe with an adaptation from Tom Lacalamita's recipe of Pain Paisan. the result was great. we were really happy with this bread. it looked fantastic and tasted great. in fact we liked the wheat rolls more this time. they were incredibly soft and delicious with a spread of butter. since the quantity of the doughs  were enough to make two Partybrots,

instead of another big bread i made few small partybrot buns... those looked cute and were real handy... we enjoyed them much over the next three days with our bowl of soup and as well as with butter for breakfast.... i stored them in the fridge and microved them for 30 seconds before serving.

Delicious Italian Easter Breads

Italian Easter Breads in preparation...

and afterwards...

prepared with flour, eggs, butter and love 

and 

Dorothy's Bread Machine recipe of her Grammy's Italian Easter Bread.

If you are in search of that perfect bread machine recipe for Italian Easter Bread... then look no further.  Hop over to 

Shockingly Delicious and get started on your bread. 

Sending the first photograph to Black and White Wednesday, a photography event started by 

Susan of  The Well-Seasoned Cook, now organized by Cinzia of Cindystar and 

hosted this week by  The Well-Seasoned Cook.

GYCO Reveal ~ The Loaded Rib Cage..

Two weeks back, while making my usual rounds around my favorites in blogosphere, I stumbled upon this fun competition...  

Get your Chef On-Beer

Without thinking any further I simply signed for it... and then spent a good deal of time thinking what to cook ?? Considering the fact that I don't drink at all, coming up with a recipe that included beer seemed like a real challenge. and that is when Mr MN came into the picture and suggested a few combos. he said  " try beer bread or  a beered tandoori chicken. those combos go well.. " so i sat over his ideas for a while and then googled a little, landed on this awesome blog and thought of...... TADAAA... 

THE LOADED RIB CAGE

The experiment a super-duper hit. Mr MN and i LOVED it and we thank the host  

Jen @ Four Mars and One Venus 

 Julie @ White Lights on Wednesday  and

Co-Host Paula @ Call Me PMc 

for bringing home the GYCO - Beer Challenge that brought the chef out in us and made us create a hell of a recipe !

now ready to get a little tipsy... read and try this recipe along with me...

ingredients

for the rib cage (i used 1/2 of the dough to make a 15 inch long rib cage)

3/4 cup Guinness Draught Beer

2 large eggs

3 tablespoons vegetable oil

3 cups bread flour

2 tablespoons sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 1/2 teaspoon bread machine yeast 

for the chicken filling

3 tablespoons oil

3/4 cup finely chopped onions

1 cup Guinness Draught Beer

1 1/2 tablespoon Swad Tandoori Masala

3 mushroom heads thinly sliced

1/2 cup frozen peas 

4 chicken tenders, and marinated

salt to taste

for the chicken marinade

2 teaspoons ginger-garlic paste 
2 teaspoons vinegar 
1 teaspoon hot pepper sauce 
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce 
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoons of cornflour

what i did.

• as with all my chicken preparations, 4 hours prior to cooking i cleaned and chopped the chicken tenders into 1/4 inch pieces , whisked the ingredients of the marinade in a bowl, poured it into a resealable plastic bag and added chicken pieces coating them evenly with the marinade. then sealing the bag i marinated the chicken in the refrigerator till i was ready to cook.
• making the dough for the rib cage was easy. i simply put the ingredients into the pan of my bread machine and programmed it on the dough cycle. 
• while the dough was being kneaded i began cooking the chicken. to begin with, I heated 2 tablespoons of the oil in my large iron skillet, then added the chopped onions in it. Sauteed the onions for  about 5 minutes, then added 1/4 cup Guinness to it, simmered until most of the liquid  evaporated, then repeated this three more times.
• once the onions were caramelized in the beer, i added in the tandoori masala, mushrooms and peas and let it cook till the raw smell of the masala was gone, about 4-5 minutes. then i added in the marinated chicken and salt and cooked it with the rest of the ingredients for about  8-10 minutes. i then removed it from the heat and covered it and kept aside.
• in 1 1/2 hours when the dough cycle completed, I divided the dough into 2 halves. then rolled out a 15 inch by 9 inch sheet out of one half of the dough and using the pictorial guide here, i loaded my dough with the chicken filling and braided close the open rib cage, covered it lightly with a plastic wrap and left it on the kitchen counter to rise for the next 45 minutes...

• 15 minutes before baking, i preheated the oven to 350 degree F, and once that was done, i put my loaded dough in the oven and baked it for 35-37 minutes. 

the bread seemed a little hard when i took it out from the oven. so i wrapped it in a kitchen towel and left it that way on the kitchen counter. 10 minutes when i unwrapped... i was excited with how soft the bread was... and don't even get me started on the chicken filling... it was AMAZING... my only regret is that i forgot to egg wash the dough surface before putting it in the oven. as a result it did not look as glazy as i would have wanted it...but with a baby clinging to your feet, such details often escape you at the right moment.... so don't hold me for that... this recipe is a real winner and you HAVE to try it to know that :)

Hope you had as much fun reading about it as i had cooking it. 

Wish me luck for the Challenge and do visit the other exciting Beered recipes at 

Four Marrs and One Venus

White Lights on Wednesday

Call Me PMc

Also Sharing this with : 

Tempt my Tummy @Blessed with Grace, Totally Tasty Tuesday @ Mandy's Recipe Box,  Show Me What You Got @ Our Delightful Home

Tasty Tuesday @ 33 Shades of Green, Tuesday Talent Show @ Chef in Training
Share it Link Party @ Winthrop Chronicles, Mix it Up Monday @ Flour Me With Love's, Mop it up Monday @ I should be Mopping the Floor, What’d You Do this Weekend?  @ Tumbleweed Contessa,  Foodie Friday @ Rattlebridge Farm, Weekend Wonders @ The Thriftiness Miss

 The Weekend re-Treat @The Best Blog  Recipes