Malted Milk Ball Blondies

This one is still a work in progress...  a couple of weeks ago, I made the Malted Milk Ball Blondies from Baked, New Frontiers in Baking by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito.  I thought they were a little too sweet and a smidge greasy.  Also, while they had good malt flavor immediately after baking, it had disappeared by the next day.  

Although everyone liked the first batch, I made them again the next week and used less sugar, less butter and upped the malt powder (and decreased the flour because of the changes in  amounts of butter/malt powder).  But then they were too dry and not quite sweet enough.  Not really an improvement (however, my guinea pigs liked that batch too).  At least the malt flavor was a little more pronounced.

I'll probably make these yet again since I love all things malted, but I think I will try to find another blondie recipe that produces the nice chewy blondies that I like and tweak that by adding chopped malted milk balls and malt powder.

Garlic Scallion Noodles

No, I'm not falling behind in making new recipes, I'm just lagging in blogging about them.  Why?  Spending too much time out watching the birdies.  What else?!?

I made this recipe for Garlic Scallion Noodles the other night.  It sounded great.  And also quick and easy.  And I had everything on hand.  But, unfortunately, both RWT and I found it disappointing.  

It was a little bland and I found the sweetness (I added the lessor amount of brown sugar) a little odd in this application even though I usually like savory/sweet combinations.  Perhaps it was missing acid?  There is some leftover and maybe I'll give it a splash of black vinegar when I finish it off.

No pictures for this one, the ones in the link above are much nicer than I could ever take.

Pan de Horno

Spanish Bread

To go with the Spanish-Style Meatballs, I will be making this Spanish-Style Bread (Pan de Horno) for my next gourmet group dinner.  It is not an earth-shattering bread.  Just a plain, white bread.  The most notable thing about it is that it has that somewhat elusive thin yet crisp crust that makes for really good sandwich rolls.

I suspect the crust is the result of working some olive oil into the flour before adding the water. The oil coats the proteins in the flour and prohibits some of the gluten development, so it  also results in a bread with a nice tender crumb (again, perfect for sandwich rolls).  But, while the oil helps to delay staling, this bread is definitely best when eaten within a few days and you'll lose that neato crust after the first day.

The recipe can be found here and you might want to halve it because it makes a lot of bread.   I ended up grinding about 1/3 of the leftover bread into bread crumbs to use later.  

This bread will probably never be the star of a meal, but it can play a very nice supporting role.  Especially supporting the insides of a sandwich.