Irish Soda Bread

This week’s recipe Irish Soda Bread, on page 214 with Baking with Julia was a big hit at my house. With just 4 ingredients, it really doesn’t get much simpler than this! The basic ingredients are flour, baking soda, salt and buttermilk. Yup, just four ingredients! I followed the nontraditional recipe and added one cup of raisins to sweeten it up just a bit, and I am glad I did because the bread was delicious!

There is not much I can say about this recipe because all I did was mix everything together, turned it onto a floured surface and kneaded it a little, shaped it into a disk, cut a hash mark in the top and voila, that was it!

What a Beauty!

As you can see, my bread turned a beautiful golden color, thanks to a hint from my friend Laura. I brushed egg wash on top before I put it into the oven, and as you can see, it came out golden and delicious looking. Thanks Laura!

Love the color...

Next Month’s recipes:

April 3, 2012- Pizza Rustica, pages 430 and 431.
April 17, 2012- Lemon Loaf Cake, pages 252 and 253.

Regelach

This week’s recipe was for Rugelach which can be found on page 325 of Baking with Julia cookbook. I have to admit, I don’t think I have ever had a Rugelach so I was very excited to try this recipe.  I actually had to look them up on the internet to find out more about these mysterious, but delicious sounding cookies. After much research, I was delighted to find out that these little cookies are a Jewish pastry. The word Rugelach is a Yiddish word that means "little twists.



After finding out more about these cookies, I decided that I wanted to stay true to their meaning “little twists” so instead of rolling them into a jelly roll like the recipe called for, I rolled them into twists.  The dough was easy to work with, as long as it stayed cold.  I rolled it out and then used a large bowl and cut out a circle so I could easily cut it into 8 slices. It rolled out nicely, and as you can see by the picture, a perfect circle! 




Perfect!



The recipe called for apricot lekvar, which is a think apricot jam, but because I am not a fan of apricot, I decided to raspberry jam instead. I also decided to use toasted pecans and semi-sweet chocolate for the filling. I toasted the pecans to pull out their delicious flavors, and used a food processor to chop the nuts along with the chocolate; I then folded in the raspberry jam which created a mouth-watering paste.




Toasting Pecans!

 Instead of all the cookies being the same, I decided to just spread some of the raspberry jam on the dough and sprinkle them with pecans. Once they were both done, I decided I liked just the raspberry jam and pecans, where as my husband enjoyed the chocolate ones better.



Raspberry Jam and Pecans

 


Ready for the oven!



The first batch of Rugelach burned!! I am not sure why, but after pulling the second batch out, and saw that the bottoms were dark, I realized that I needed to put them on parchment paper to avoid this. The third batch came out of the oven not looking the prettiest, but they were pretty good.

The next time I make this recipe, I think I will follow the exact recipe (minus the apricot) and roll them into a jelly roll as directed. I am looking forward to a more successful batch of Rugelach!

Next recipe: Irish Soda Bread, March 20th!!!

Stay tuned