Benito's blog

It had been a long time since I’ve baked a pie and we are having friends over for their birthday dinners tomorrow.  Using the rhubarb a good friend sends me each year from his country home I decided to make a rhubarb pie.  No other fruit just rhubarb.  I’ve actually never had a rhubarb only pie and thought it would be interesting to try.  The rhubarb filling is spiced with nutmeg and I’ve left it nice and tart but with a decent amount of sweetness.

The weather has finally cooled off a bit, enough for another attempt at Giorilli Panettone.  I also finally have some free time for the planning and baking now that I am between locum duties and trips.  I have my fingers crossed for this one.  I’m not sure if it will make a difference or not, but I had been skipping one of the steps of the shaping.  There is an extra shaping and tightening step right after an uncovered rest on the countertop that I wasn’t doing.  I have my doubts that it will make a difference but we’ll see.

I got my hands on my whole kamut recently.  I haven’t had any in quite some time.  I’ve always loved that sunny yellow hue it gives the crumb.  Similar to semolina, I find that sesame seeds really pair well with it.  I haven’t sliced it yet but wanted to post this anyways.  This one is another lean dough with a high pff at 40% which is now my standard for these types of Pullman loaves.  I love the tiny blisters on the crust, even along the sides where the crust was in contact with the pan.  I love how simple and stress free these bakes are.

I love moon cakes and these are the first ones that I made in celebration of the Mid Autumn Festival.  I don’t love the salted egg yolk that is traditionally in the middle of each moon cake to represent the moon, so I didn’t include these.  These are filled with homemade azuki bean paste which I make less sweet than commercially available azuki bean paste.  I just ate the cut one and they are truly delicious, just enough sweetness and a bit of texture from the paste as I didn’t blend it down.  The pastry is nice and short and crisp, yummy.

This is a surprisingly “healthy” cake as far as cakes go.  There isn’t a lot of flour, there is no dairy fat, the only saturated fat is from the eggs.  The carrot is blended with the olive oil and orange juice so it isn’t much like a traditional carrot cake.  It is obviously very moist and won’t dry out quickly at all with the olive oil in it.  It is actually really delicious and all gone now.

The can of pumpkin purée that I bought was huge, the grocery stores here only seem to carry a very large size can of it.  So having a ton left I decided I’d see what it does to bread.  I treated it similarly to how I’d treat adding mashed potatoes.  Given how mild pumpkin flavour is, I cooked the purée down a bit to bring out the flavour.  Because I wanted a savory bread and not something that would be sweet, I didn’t add spices to this.  I’m quite pleased with how it baked up.

I found this recipe in the Globe and Mail.  I’ve never been a huge fan of cheesecake, it always seems like a nothingburger to me.  I was hoping that the pumpkin might make it more interesting.  I think this cheesecake would benefit from spices myself.  This is a Basque style cheesecake in that it has a caramelized top, however, it has a cookie crust as a base which Basque cheesecakes don’t usually from what I understand. 

I’ve been away in Vancouver for 11 days and back to doing a locum this and the next 1.5 weeks so haven’t really had time to bake.  But I carved some time out of my afternoon and evening to bake some Taiwanese Pineapple cakes for my second time.  I’m made improvements on the last batch I made more than a year ago.  

This is the dessert that I decided to make for tomorrow night’s dinner.  I like to prep as much as I can the day before to make the day of the dinner party less stressful.  In fact, the main course is marinating overnight to be baked in the oven at dinner time.  This recipe was by Nadia Hussain from the Great British Bake Off.  She calls it a Pineapple Bundt, but given the ingredients I’m calling it a pina colada bundt since it has pineapple, coconut and lime in it.  I hope everyone enjoys it.  Surprisingly I’ve never made a drizzle cake before.

We are hosting a group of friends for dinner tomorrow night and wanted to bake a focaccia again to have with our chicken Marbella with peaches.  I haven’t made a focaccia with potatoes yet so decided on this one adding the usual red onions, rosemary and cracked peppercorns to it.  Nothing fancy but hopefully good.