Blueberry Monkey Bread

Monkeys! Who doesn't love monkeys? They can fly spaceships, run hotels, play professional baseball, even catapult a B-List actor to the presidency! So what could be better than monkey bread?

One of my favorite ways to eat any kind of bread is to just pull off a chunk with my hands and go to town. Since monkey bread is simply a loaf comprised of bite-sized rolls, it's the ideal treat for the bread-loving savage. This particular recipe was inspired by the Fluffy Blueberry Cardamom Monkey Bread at Bake My Day and James Beard's recipe in his classic book, Beard on Bread. It's a sweet and spicy twist on such breakfast classics as the blueberry muffin or the blueberry pancake.

Blueberry Monkey Bread

• 2 cups milk, luke warm
• 2 tsp. active dry yeast
• 1/2 cup plus 2 tbsp. sugar
• 10 tbsp. butter
• 1 tsp. ground cardamom seeds
• 1/2 tsp. lemon zest
• 1 large egg
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 5 cups bread flour
• 1/2 cup blueberries (I used frozen)
• 1/2 tsp. cinnamon

Sprinkle the yeast over the milk and let proof, 5 minutes. Combine the 2 tbs.sugar, 2 tbs. butter, egg, zest, cardamom, salt and 1 cup of the flour in a bowl. Add the milk/yeast mixture and stir with a spatula until smooth. Add 2 more cups of the flour and stir again to a smooth paste. Add another cup of flour and mix to incorporate, adding more of the flour as you think necessary. It should be a soft dough, but not so sticky that it adheres to the side of the bowl.

Turn the dough out on a floured work surface and knead by hand, just a couple of times. For bulkrise, place in an oiled bowl, cover with plastic wrap and let rise until doubled, about 90 minutes. Punch the dough down and let it rest for 5 minutes. Return to a floured work surface and shape it into a ball. Let it rest for another 5 to 10 minutes. Meanwhile, butter two loaf pans.

In a small saucepan, melt one stick of butter with the blueberries, 1/2 cup of the sugar, and the cinnamon. To shape, divide the dough into ping-pong ball-sized balls by rolling them in your hands. I dusted my fingers with a tiny bit of flour when the dough got too sticky to mold. Roll the balls in the butter mixture (I found a slotted spoon quite helpful) and line each pan with them, arranging in loose layers. Pour what is left of the butter mixture over the top of the loaves. Cover loosely with a foil tent and let the dough rise to the top of the loaf pans, about a half hour. Place both pans in a preheated 375F oven and bake for 40 minutes, until golden.

Makes two loaves.

From the Let's Get Real, I'm Never Going to Do This Department

How to Make Your Own Vanilla Extract 

This is up there with churning your own butter. It doesn't sound all that hard, but neither does sewing my own curtains, and I don't do that either. What the hell are mother-in-laws for, anyway?

(Belated) January Daring Bakers' Challenge: Tuiles

How I long for summer.

Given the decedence of last month's yule log challenge, how fitting that the Daring Bakers kicked off the new year with something light. For January, Karen a.k.a. Baking Soda at Bake My Day! and Zorra a.k.a. Kochtopf at 1x umrühren bitte challenged us, the daring bakers of the internets, to create tuiles, a thin, crisp cookie that is molded into various traditional shapes while still warm. They may be rolled into cylandars and filled with whipped cream, shaped into cones for ice cream, made into fluted baskets -- you name it. This particular recipe comes from The Chocolate Book by Angélique Schmeink. Vegan and Chocolate Tuiles can be found in Finest Desserts by Michel Roux.

For me, the best part about this challenge was that it gave me an excuse to try out of one of my favorite Christmas presents, David Leibovitz's The Perfect Scoop. In honor of Rafael Nadal's ass-stomping performance at the Aussie Open, I decided to go with the Spanish treat Leche Merengada: a frozen meringue with a hint of lemon and cinnamon. (Sidenote: If some tool shed tries to tell you that  an ice cream maker is not an essential tool for a baker, run. Run far and run fast, because that person is trying to suck your life force.)

Jesus, Rafa, can't you wait a half hour? 

I was too lazy to try to make stencils for my tuiles, so at first I tried piping some free-form circles and butterflies. Except after a few minutes in the oven, my butterflies started to look like ladybugs. Actually, that one in the lower right-hand corner kind of looks like a butt. You can understand why I didn't try any more butterflies.

 

Eew?

Maybe if I shaped them with a rolling pin? 

 

Trust me, they don't look any more like butterflies right-side up.

Now they looked like Pringles, which was a slight improvement, but not exactly what I was going for. On to the cigars.

Just a cigar.

Muuuuuch better. The easiest way I found to shape the cookies was to pick them up with a spatula directly from the oven and drape them over the round handle of a wooden spoon. Then, using a kitchen towel to protect your fingers, gently mold the cookie around the handle (or dowel, or whatever) and hold it there until it firms up, about 45 seconds.

The end result: crispy, buttery, delicious. A perfect accompaniment to the delicate flavor of the Leche Merengada. This paring could only possibly be improved by the addition of a little espresso poured over the top. Maybe not for Rafa, though. He's hyper enough.