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| Avant-garde Irish soda bread |
Having gotten back home and settled back in, it was time to head back to the oven. In honor of St Patrick's day, I opted to make a loaf of Irish soda bread inspired by one of my Paul Hollywood cookbooks. Since this was a weeknight adventure, of course I was going to do some improvisation! There was some goat milk cheddar kicking it in the fridge and that seemed a reasonable addition. There was also some leftover almond paste and, in a fit of spontaneity, that went in, too. Honestly, I thought I'd gone too far this time. But the final loaf wasn't so bad, unorthodox it might be.
The weekend brought some big baking plans. Started out with a recipe that I'd been wanting to test out for a while - bienenstich. It's a bit like Boston cream pie in construction but with delicious golden honey! This also gave me another chance to work on the yeasted cake batters. I was confused because the batter didn't rise as much as I'd thought it should, but also never having eaten a bienenstich means that I didn't really have a reference point. At the time, my notes indicate that I was worried about overworking the batter. However, in hindsight, it may be that I didn't work it enough to build up the gluten appropriately. The honey creme patissiere was also a bit of a challenge. I'd learned long ago about the dangers of overcooking cornstarch and I've always been cautious with the heat. This time, I think I didn't get it to set up right (too fast), but alleviated that with a second pass on the heat with a bit more cornstarch slurry. It saved it, but was a bit thicker than I'd liked. And, of course, I had to make all of those marzipan bees* for the topping because how adorable! (The dysmorphologist in me is a little concerned about all of those asymmetric ones....next time I should just let the chocolate cool a little more before piping.)
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| Bienenstich. In honor of Yertel and Lily. |
*Sidenote: For years, one of my good friends has been under the false impression that I had garnished a honey chiffon pie with marzipan bees when, in fact, said pie is garnished with chocolate ganache bees. It seemed high time to make myth a reality and construct an army of marzipan bees.
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