Atlanta etc.: Marilyn Wolf's Food Blog and Restaurant Blog

I had some shortcakes in the freezer. I pulled out two and baked them for breakfast. I added some sliced fresh peaches, a squirt of whipped cream from a can, and an omelet. A wonderful breakfast tasting of summer for which I am grateful.

I've made Black Forest cake a few times and decided to make another. This is an old-fashioned recipe---no baking powder. The cake is mechanically inflated by a meringue into which the flour is folded. I made a cherry syrup from fresh cherries. I filled the cake with cherries, iced with whipped cream, and topped with chocolate shavings. Delicious, beautiful, and rich!

I made a batch of sourdough pizza dough and used it to make a pizza: my homemade tomato sauce, low-moisture mozzarella, a little parmesan cheese. Chilling the dough before shaping helps me control it better. I ran the oven all the way up, somewhere just shy of 500 degrees F. The result doesn't crisp up the way it does in a real pizza oven but is still quite respectable.

I decided to do something a little different. I made my whole wheat bread into a cinnamon roll. I used the standard formula---sugar would have messed up the hydration. I used some fresh peaches to complement my French toast. I should have used a little more cinnamon but it was a nice change of pace.

A deal on bananas inspired me to make a banana cream pie. I blind-baked a crust, then coated the inside with chocolate ganache. I lined the bottom with sliced bananas. I made a vanilla pudding and poured it over the bananas. I made a meringue and spread it over the top. I put the pie into the oven to finish it off, giving the meringue this beautiful caramel color. The result was great---very rich but not overwhelming. This pie took a fair amount of effort but was a very satisfying use of my time. Thank you, Super Saver, for the deal on ripe bananas!

I found a special at the store on ripe bananas, a clear call for a loaf of banana bread. I used two tablespoons of cocoa powder as is my usual custom. But I decided to try a different set of spices: fresh ground nutmeg, cardamom, and ginger. The result was very good and distinctly different. Good cooking does not have to be expensive.

I had one bag of cherries but a really full pie requires too. Laziness kicked in and I decided to make up the deficit with some apples, a traditional pairing. The result was very enjoyable. The apples, being more subtle, help to highlight the cherries. All in all, a great breakfast.

I made a tasty Italian braid loaf coated with sesame seeds. This batch used all-purpose flour so it came out with slightly less texture than one made with bread flour. My only regret was that I didn't have any olives to make it into an olive loaf.

I found a great deal on sweet cherries and decided to indulge in a cherry pie. An hour-and-a-half later, I had de-pitted two bags of cherries. The result tasted great but a little runny. I used three tablespoons of tapioca powder to tighten up the juices, clearly not enough. But still very tasty.

Coffee cake is a good treat and a great breakfast item. I used my bundt pan to make a batch from the recipe in the King Arthur cookbook. That recipe includes some streusel embedded in the middle of the cake. Sour cream made it moist. The crumb is firm enough to survive dunking. I very much enjoyed and appreciate my coffee cake.

This loaf of whole wheat bread came out much more symmetrical than most of my efforts. It was so darn pretty that I had to take a photo. Now if I could just make every loaf look that nice...

I made a chocolate bundt cake as a gift. It sure looked good...

I decided to make another batch of chocolate babka from King Arthur's formula . I realized that when assembling my previous batch that I hadn't twisted together the rolls---I ended up with four thin rolls rather than two sets of twisted rolls. Twisting isn't easy and your imperfections tend to disappear. Double the flavor, double the fun...

I made a pair of Italian braids: one for me, one to give away. My mixer jumped around as it kneaded the double batch. I rotated the pans between top and bottom racks in the oven. In the end, everything was delicious.

I have added some dried ground ginger to my apple pies for quite some time. I think that it makes a nice complement to the cinnamon. For this pie, I happened to have some fresh ginger to grate into the filling. Wow, what a difference. The ginger taste is both more pronounced and more nuanced. The heat of the ginger goes very well with the apples and is balanced by the sugar. Fresh ginger is now standard procedure for my apple pies. It might be good in a pumpkin ricotta pie, too.

I wanted to bake something a little different from my usual whole wheat loaf. And I miss those Italian loaves and rolls from New Jersey. I found this recipe for a braided Italian loaf at King Arthur. After preparing the dough, I cut it into three portions and rolled each one into a long cylinder. I braided in an alternating pattern: left to right, then right to left. This style of dough shaping tends to hide imperfections, a welcome relief. (Trust me, that isn't true of all dough shaping.) I brushed with egg white and sprinkled on sesame seeds; I probably should have used even more. The result was both beautiful and delicious. Italian bread hits a delicate balance between heartiness and softness. This loaf didn't last long.

My Friday night beef was burgers. I started by making some Italian rolls. My shaping was less than ideal because I started by rolling out the dough to better gauge how much I used on each roll. I now estimate that one batch of dough should make four buns. I cooked thick burgers using a reverse sear: cooking in the oven to almost done, then searing in the pan. I browned the buns in olive oil. I added lettuce, sauteed onions, and brown mustard. Wow! The thick burgers were a great change of pace from today's typical restaurant burger. Can't beat Nebraska beef.

Apples are widely available in Nebraska. I wanted to try something different with them than my standard apple pie. The apple cake from Classic German Baking fit the bill. The cake is in between an American bread and cake, sweet but yeasted. The apple slides are piled high. It made a delicious breakfast.

Sausage biscuits and gravy make a wonderful breakfast treat. I started by cooking some sausage patties using Witty's wonderful pork. I made buttermilk biscuits. I cooked some extra sausage as the base for the sausage. I made a roux, added milk, water, and coffee. I didn't have as much milk as I would have liked so the gravy was a little thicker than the idea. Nonetheless, this was a delicious and hearty breakfast. I am grateful to be able to eat meals like this.

I had a yen for pizza and decided to make some. Here is the dough in the mixer. And the dough stretched out. I don't have my round pizza pan. Luckily, my mediocre dough stretching skills are well suited to rectangular pans. The thickness of the dough varied widely but at least some of it was thin. I used store-bought sauce and low-moisture mozzarella. After baking at high heat in the oven. A New Jersey Italian pizza fan would laugh at it but I enjoyed it. Pizza dough is remarkably simple and, given a willingness to use canned sauce, this makes a relatively simple treat.