Category Archives: Macrina Bakery & Cafe Cookbook

By Leslie Mackie

Macrina’s Fancy Focaccia

Posted on by
4

focacciaCurrently baking out of Macrina Bakery & Cafe Cookbook by Leslie Mackie

Making this focaccia was a mistake. A HUGE mistake. See, Bryan is trying out a gluten-free diet, so anything I bake I try to get rid of before he gets home. So I made this focaccia, and all my regular baking recipients weren’t answering their phones or doorbells. For awhile, I thought I’d have no choice but to eat it all myself. In fact, I gave it a pretty good shot before my neighbors got home and took the rest of the bread away from me.

Oh, this was good. So good, in fact, that the next day I made another batch of the dough and froze it. This focaccia will be the first thing I make  when Bryan reintroduces gluten back into his diet.

The recipe starts out by mixing up a biga. A biga is a runny combination of flour, water and yeast. The almost liquid dough is left in the refrigerator for up to four days. This resting period gives the yeast time to ferment and creates a lot of flavor.

So the day before I baked these beauties up, I mixed up the biga and left it overnight in the fridge. The next day, I took about half of the biga and added more water, flour and yeast to create the focaccia dough. The dough was soft and smooth and a dream to work with.

After the initial rising, the dough is divided in half and pressed out into oval shapes. After another rest, the dough is dimpled with your fingertips, brushed with olive oil and topped with whatever strikes your fancy. The bread is baked for about  25-30 minutes, or until it is golden brown.

Since Mackie’s recipe made two focaccias, I wanted to try something different. For the first focaccia, I followed her instructions to top the dough with thinly sliced roma tomatoes, salt and pepper. The only change I made was to use fresh rosemary instead of basil. This focaccia was very tasty. I liked the freshness of the tomatoes. My only quibble is that the dough under the tomatoes remained kind of wet and soggy. Mind you, I still ate almost half of it, so it didn’t bother me all that much.

For the second focaccia, I brushed the dough with melted butter instead of olive oil and covered it with thinly sliced pears and cinnamon sugar. Yes, it was very, very good. Yes, I ate more than half of this one. Yes, I had a hard time handing it over to the neighbors, and yes, I will be making this recipe over and over again. The possibilities are endless as far as toppings and flavors go.

This is the last recipe out of  Macrina Bakery & Cafe Cookbook. Overall, I really liked the book and had mostly successes. I think Mackie did a good job converting her bakery-sized recipes to ones the home cook can easily make. This is a cookbook that I’ll return to over and over.

Fresh Fruit Muffins v4 & 5

Posted on by
2

fruit_muffin_v4Currently baking out of Macrina Bakery & Cafe Cookbook by Leslie Mackie

Versions four and five of my fresh fruit muffins went from complicated to simple, but got better as a result.

For the fourth attempt at tweaking this recipe, I increased the maple syrup to 1/4 cup and decreased the amount of milk by the same amount. Once again, I got nicely domed tops with a tender, sweet crumb. The maple flavor was subtle and went nicely with the blueberries. As I was considering this version though, I realized how complicated it had become. I was using two different dairy products (milk and sour cream), oil and butter, and three different sweetners (white sugar, brown sugar and maple syrup). There had to be an easier way.

So, with the next version I simplified. I used all buttermilk instead of the sour cream and milk and I nixed the maple syrup. The flavor it added wasn’t enough to justify the extra ingredient. I also increased the white sugar and the oil a bit. This version was good. I didn’t miss the maple syrup and the muffins were just sweet enough. I kept the struesel topping as I liked the added crunch it gave the muffins.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that as I was researching other muffin recipes after this fifth attempt, I came across a recent Cooks Illustrated blueberry muffin recipe. Lo and behold, their recipe and my recipe are strikingly similar. They do some other things to increase the blueberry flavor, like add a homemade blueberry jam, but the basic muffin recipes are very close.

No matter. I’m going to tweak this latest version once again and will post the results soon.

Challah

Posted on by
1

challahCurrently baking out of Macrina Bakery & Cafe Cookbook by Leslie Mackie

Challah (a traditional Jewish bread, usually braided) was one of the first breads I learned to make in baking school. We liked making it, because it could be mixed, left to rise and then baked in the five hours we were in class. Some of the other breads took days before they were done.

Me, impatient? Nah . . .

Mackie’s challah recipe is pretty straightforward. Challah is an enriched bread, meaning the dough contains some fat and sugar. Besides the usual flour, yeast and water, this recipe calls for eggs, honey and some vegetable oil. The dough is kneaded, then left to rise. After the first rise, the dough is divided into three parts. Each portion of dough is rolled into a rope and all three ropes are then braided. Before being baked, the dough is brushed an egg wash and sprinkled with poppy seeds.

The dough was easy enough to mix and knead (thank you, Kitchen Aid mixer). The only problem I had was that it was incredibly sticky and soft. I even added another 1/4 cup of flour to the recipe. Mackie states that the dough will be wet, so I wasn’t too concerned. After the first rise, the dough was easier to handle, but it was still very, very sticky. I had to use a lot of flour in order to roll and braid the dough.

The bread baked up very nicely. It had a dense crumb with a firm bite to it. It was soft and fairly neutral flavored – perfect as toast or spread with butter and jam.

Lemon Butter Cake

Posted on by
4

Currently baking out of Macrina Bakery & Cafe Cookbook by Leslie Mackie

fallen_cakeWhat to do when the baking gods give you a cake that looks like this?

You make trifles. You take the lovely, lemon butter cake that showed such promise as a batter but then bombed in the oven and cut it into cubes. You take the lovely lemon syrup you made and soak the cubes. Then you take the lemon frosting you made that turned into a runny pudding, along with some homemade raspberry jam, and you layer the whole thing into plastic cups so you can give them away to your husband’s softball players. They’ll eat just about anything.

Yeah. The baking gods didn’t like me on this day.

trifle

Nectarine and Almond Crumb Tart

Posted on by
4

nectarine_crumb_tartCurrently baking out of Macrina Bakery & Cafe Cookbook by Leslie Mackie

Right from the start, me and this tart didn’t get along. It all started when I went to the market to get some plums. You see, the original recipe calls for plums, not nectarines, and for several days running, the market had piles and piles of beautiful plums. Except for the day I went to buy some. On that day, not a plum in sight. But they did have nectarines . . .

Next up was the crust. Mackie calls it a sweet almond dough that is pressed into the pan, rather than rolled out. The dough is made by combining ground almonds, sugar, flour and melted butter. The mixture is crumbled into a tart pan and pressed into place. Sounds easy. Should be easy. It wasn’t. The dough started hardening up right away and made it hard to cover the pan evenly. Eventually, after a lot of swearing and pressing, I got a fairly even crust. That went into the oven to blind bake until golden brown.

After 25 minutes of baking, my crust, when I peeked underneath the beans, was still white and wet. Out came the beans. In about 10 more minutes of baking, I had a browned crust. While the crust cooled, I started on the filling.

Cream cheese, eggs, sugar, lemon zest, cornstarch and nutmeg (basically a cheesecake batter) are mixed and spread onto the crust. Then the fruit is laid on top of the filling and the whole thing is covered with a crumb topping (flour, sugar, cinnamon and chilled butter mixed until crumbly). Again, sounds fairly simple.

My filling was very liquidy and it poured into the crust. And my lovely, beautiful nectarines had no flavor. None. Zip. At this point, I was going to finish this recipe come hell or high water. So, on went the sliced nectarines where they promptly sank into the filling. Adding the crumb topping only submerged them further, but at this point, I didn’t care. I popped the whole thing in the oven and started scraping bits of crust dough off my kitchen floor.

The tart baked for just over an hour and the thing actually had the gall to look and smell really lovely. I let the tart cool for a couple of hours and then cut a slice. Really, I didn’t have any hope that it would taste good (those nectarines . . .). I took a bite. Not bad. I took another bite. It was actually pretty good. Another bite. This is delicious. Something happened while that tart baked. The nectarines got some flavor, the filling firmed up and the crust and crumb topping gave the tart some texture and bite.

In the headnotes to the recipe, Mackie says this is an “easy-to-prepare” tart. Don’t believe it. It has multiple steps and components, not including cooling times. But the end result is completely worth the time and trouble. I was prepared to hate the tart, after all the work and trouble it caused me, but the result was worth it.

Fresh Fruit Muffins v3

Posted on by
1

fruit_muffin_v3Currently baking out of Macrina Bakery & Cafe Cookbook by Leslie Mackie

For my next attempt at the fresh fruit muffins, I looked for ways to add flavor and texture to the muffin.

I decided to stick with blueberries for the fruit component. To add more flavor, I added a tablespoon of maple syrup to the batter. I also added the zest of an entire lemon to the batter (that’s about a tablespoon; Mackie’s recipe calls for 1 teaspoon). I liked the additional zest, but neither me nor my tasters could detect the maple syrup. Next time, I’ll increase the maple syrup and decrease the white sugar.

The other major change I made this time was to add a sprinkling of cinnamon streusel to the top of the muffins. This was a big hit with the tasters. It added another flavor to the muffin and gave it some crunch.

Lemon-Sour Cherry Coffee Cake

Posted on by
2

lemon_cranberry_coffee_cakeCurrently baking out of Macrina Bakery & Cafe Cookbook by Leslie Mackie

Here’s another cake where I liked the batter better than I did the baked version. The recipe starts off by combining butter, sugar and lemon zest and beating the heck out of them. Eggs, lemon juice, yogurt and dry ingredients are then added. At the end, plumped sour cherries are folded into the batter. The whole thing is baked in a bundt pan for just over an hour. To up the lemon flavor, a glaze of powdered sugar, lemon zest and lemon juice is poured over the cooled cake.

I had to make a few changes. I couldn’t find any sour cherries, so I used cranberries instead. Also, when I went to get my yogurt from the fridge, it was, uh, slightly past it’s due date. I’m pretty sure I had a good crop of penicillin growing in there. I ended up using the same amount of sour cream instead.

The cake was moist and tender and it had a really good lemon flavor. I found the cranberries to be somewhat intrusive, even though I had chopped them a bit. I think I’d actually like the cake better plain, or with the add-ins sprinkled on top, with the glaze. Speaking of the glaze, it really added a nice lemon burst to the cake, and it’s worth the extra effort.

Fresh Fruit Muffins versions 1 and 2

Posted on by
2

fruit_muffins_v1Currently baking out of Macrina Bakery & Cafe Cookbook by Leslie Mackie

For the first rendition of Mackie’s recipe, I decided to modify the amount of leavening called for and bake the muffins at a higher temperature (400 degrees versus 375 degrees). I cut the original recipe in half and used 1 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder (in the original halved version, Mackie called for closer to 3 teaspoons). I also left out the fruit out because I wanted to taste the flavor of the muffins by themselves.

Pulling this batch out of the oven, you could see the difference immediately. This batch had browned nicely and had high, rounded tops. The flavor was good and the texture was much improved over the original.

fruit_muffins_v2Onto the second version.

For this version, the only change I made was to add fruit, blueberries in this case. I left everything else the same.

I still got my nicely rounded tops, and the muffins browned well, but they tasted kinda flat and watery. With the added fruit, I think the muffins need to bake a little longer, and I think I need to add some more sugar to the batter. Also, these muffins are just crying out for some sort of topping, such as a struesel.

Fresh Fruit Muffins

Posted on by
1

Currently baking out of Macrina Bakery & Cafe Cookbook by Leslie Mackie

I’ve been searching for the perfect fruit muffin recipe for some time. I’m looking for a master recipe where I can change the fruit according to what’s in season. That’s the same idea behind Mackie’s recipe.

The muffin batter is simply flour, sugar, salt, leavening, eggs, milk and butter. At the end, fresh fruit of your choice is folded into the batter and then baked. The batter itself is only slightly sweet, so it really showcases the flavor of the fruit.

Where to begin? My first problem was with the size of the muffins. Mackie says this recipe makes 6 to 8 muffins but doesn’t tell you what size those muffins should be. With 3 cups of flour, I assumed they made jumbo muffins, so I decided to cut the recipe in half. My next problem was with the leavening. There was just too much of it, and I ended up with flat or concave muffins with a really strange texture to them. But, I liked the flavor of the muffins, so I’ve decided to work on the recipe a bit, and post my results each time.

Chocolate Cherry Pound Cake

Posted on by
2

choc_cherry_cakeCurrently baking out of Macrina Bakery & Cafe Cookbook by Leslie Mackie

I don’t really know what to say about this cake. It took three (three!) sticks of butter, 2 cups of cocoa powder and more than 3 cups of sugar. It baked for almost two hours and weighed more than any decent cake should. It was dark, chocolatey and rich and had a texture more fudgy than cake-like.

And yet, I didn’t really like it all that much. As the cake cooled down, the texture became dry, almost chalky, and I didn’t like the cherries in it. I didn’t make the chocolate glaze (I forgot to get the cream at the grocery store), but I don’t think that would have made much difference.

But the batter. Oh my. I could have eaten THAT by the spoonful. The batter had a lot of promise and I’m wondering how it would do as cupcakes with some sort of filling (raspberry? orange? vanilla whipped cream?). Here’s another recipe that is just begging to be tweaked.