We've got a wide array of bakes this roundup! 3 breads, a cake, cupcakes and cookies!
Cinnamon Star Bread - King Arthur Baking School
My Christmas gift to my parents last year was a weekend trip to Vermont for Fall foliage and a baking class at King Arthur! My Dad loves taking photos and Mom bakes (not as much as she used to, but she still enjoys it) so we figured it was a bit of fun for each of them. We chose the Sensational Sweet Breads class to make cinnamon star bread and chocolate babka! I have made both before (different recipes) but thought it would be the most fun for everyone and it lined up with what we hoped would be peak leaf viewing. We made one dough for both treats at the beginning of class and then went back and forth making parts of each. You can check out all of King Arthur's website for all of their in-person baking classes! As of right now there are classes in Vermont and Washington.
Chocolate Babka - King Arthur Baking School
This was also part of our King Arthur class. It seems like such an intimidating thing to make, but it's really not that scary once you understand the process! I did learn some new tips that people don't think to write in recipes, which is why I love taking these classes! Our first was a Pizza Perfected class, check out my blog post.
Our exact recipes are not on their website, I guess so they're special for class, but here are similar ones - Cinnamon Star Bread and Chocolate Babka. Our dough was just flour, sugar, yeast, salt, butter, eggs, milk, water and vanilla, so the doughs will be slightly different. Our babka also used a simple syrup after baking instead of a crumble topping. This recipe from America's Test Kitchen is the other babka recipe I have made and it was more similar to what we did in class. And this is the other star bread I had made, also a little bit closer to our class recipe. But I'm sure any of the above will be delicious!
Sweet Cream Funfetti Cupcakes
This was an interesting recipe to try because it's not your usual batter OR frosting recipe. The secret ingredient is using a can of sweetened condensed milk! These didn't come out pretty because it was a little warm when I made them and the frosting was a little melty, but they sure do taste good! Jenna's look much cooler with the crumbled cupcake on the frosting but mine just was not cooperating. Maybe next time I make them I can do a better job of decorating.
Chocolate Raspberry Truffle Cookies
YUM! These were amazingggg! Christian said they're one of the best cookies I've ever made. The cookie is nice and soft and the truffle center is so luxurious. They're surprisingly easy to make, even though there are a few extra steps from normal cookies. I don't think they need the sprinkle of extra freeze dried raspberries on top, but they do look prettier that way so I'd probably still do a few that way each time just for the pictures, ha ha!
Hostess Cupcake Cake
This has been Christian's requested birthday cake for the past few years. I didn't get to make it last year because we were in Florida for his birthday. This year I made it mid-week after his birthday because we got home from Florida on his birthday and needed a bit of a food detox before having a rich dessert, so we turned it into a birthday and anniversary cake. Even then, we froze half of it to break up the eating into different times, ha ha. I used a combination of two recipes, one for the cake because I don't always have buttermilk on hand, the other for the rest of the elements. Cake recipe and the remainder of recipe.
Dutch Crunch Bread/Tiger Bread/Tijgerbrood
When Christian and I went to Disney World for our anniversary in 2022 we ate at Jiko, one of their Signature restaurants at Animal Kingdom Lodge (we stayed there for the trip too!) and had the most delicious "giraffe bread." I had always wondered what it was and randomly came upon this dutch crunch bread from King Arthur and it looked surprisingly similar so I decided to give it a go! I made mine circles instead of hoagie shape so I could really see how they came out compared to the giraffe bread.
Unfortunately something must have gone wrong after I put the topping on them. The dough underneath started to crack so they were no longer rounded on top. So the topping had a crackle effect and the dough underneath had cracks too. Guess I'll have to try again! I'm wondering if they didn't rise enough in some of their rest periods or if I didn't deflate the topping enough before putting on. At least the crackle topping part worked, and looks just like the bread we had at Jiko! The texture and flavor were also great, so it was just a visual issue. I will report back when I remake them and fix the problem!
EDIT: Chatted with King Arthur and the rep was also confused but she thinks maybe my topping was too thick and dried out too quickly as it rose creating those extra big cracks.
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