0 Citrus Soy Bundt Cake (IMBB27 + SHF20 = The Joy of Soy)

I like soy. I say yes to edamame, soy milk, bean curd skins, and tofu. And a definite no to Tofutti ice cream. And I’m indifferent to some soy stuff like "doe-fu-fah" with syrup. I consider soy stuff as just foods I like to eat and not as a substitute for animal products. When I hear comments about how soy milk doesn’t taste like (cow’s) milk, I always think to myself "Of course it doesn’t taste like milk, it’s a drink made from soy beans." (Sorry for the mini-rant.)

When Reid at ‘OnoKineGrindz extended the deadline for this month’s "Is My Blog Burning?" + "Sugar High Fridays" event, I made a last minute decision to bake a cake with the theme ingredient soy. First I had to figure out what soy products I wanted to use. I always have unsweetened soy milk in my pantry so I would definitely use that. The Safeway across the street from where I work offered a surprisingly decent selection of soy products. They carried soy flour, soy butter, soy sour cream, and many others. In addition to soy milk, I decided to use soy yogurt and soy flour in my cake. I decided against using soy butter because it seemed no better than margarine (which I never use).

I based my recipe on one I found on the Kikkoman Pearl soy milk website. I replaced 25% of the all-purpose flour with soy flour. According to the package, it’s not wise to replace more than one-third of the flour with soy flour since it has no gluten and the structure of the cake will suffer. I added some soy yogurt for moistness and orange and lemon juices to up the citrus factor.

The resulting cake was moist and not too sweet but it tasted more like soy than citrus. I would classify it as a loaf or a bread (much like a pumpkin bread). Many folks detected an “herbal” or “earthy” aftertaste. Since I’ve never used soy flour or soy yogurt in my baking before today, I couldn’t tell which ingredient caused that aftertaste. As a former scientist, I would normally never change more than one variable at a time but I was short on time and this isn’t the lab. I probably won’t use this recipe again, but overall I had fun experimenting with soy.




Citrus Soy Bundt Cake
(makes one 10-inch Bundt)

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 soy flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 3/4 cups granulated sugar
1 tbsp finely grated meyer lemon zest
1 tbsp finely grated orange zest
3 large eggs, at room temp.
1/2 cup soy yogurt, at room temp.
3/4 cup unsweetened soy milk
2 tbsp meyer lemon juice
1/4 cup freshly squeezed orange juice
powdered sugar (optional)

Sift all-purpose flour, soy flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside. Combine soy milk and juices. Set aside.

In the bowl of a standing mixer, cream butter, sugar, lemon zest, and orange zest until light and fluffy, scraping down sides occasionally. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Mix in yogurt.

Add dry ingredients to creamed mixture alternately with soy milk, beginning and ending with dry ingredients. Beat well after each addition.

Pour batter into buttered and floured 10-inch Bundt pan. Bake in preheated 325°F oven 50 minutes, or until cake tester comes out clean. Cool in pan for 10 minutes. Carefully remove cake onto cooling rack and cool completely.

Sprinkle with powdered sugar if desired.

Tags: IMBB27, SHF20

0 Russian Tea Cakes

A cookie by any other name is still a cookie. Except when it’s a cookie, a cake, a ball and a tart – that is, a Mexican wedding cookie, a Russian tea cake, a butter ball, or a sand tart. This rich, buttery, melt-in-your-mouth cookie is known by a variety of names and can be made with a variety of nuts. Walnuts, pecans, almonds, and hazelnuts are all good choices. I roll them in powdered sugar twice – once while they’re still warm from the oven and again after they’ve cooled. The dough doesn’t spread too much so I normally fit 18 cookies per half sheet pan.


Russian Tea Cakes
(adapted from Star’s Desserts by Emily Luchetti)
makes 36 cookies

6 oz walnuts, toasted
6 tbsp granulated sugar
½ lb (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temp.
½ tsp vanilla paste (or extract)
2 cups all-purpose flour
½ tsp salt
powdered sugar (for rolling)

Preheat oven to 325 F. Put the walnuts and 2 tbsp granulated sugar in a food processor and finely grind. Set nut mixture aside. In medium bowl, sift flour and salt. Set dry ingredients aside.

Combine the butter and remaining 4 tbsp granulated sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer and cream until light and fluffy. Add the vanilla. Add the flour and salt. Add the ground nut-sugar mixture. Mixing after each addition until just incorporated.

Form dough into 1-inch balls and place onto parchment lined cookie sheet pans. Bake until light brown about 20 minutes. While they are warm, roll the cookies in powdered sugar. Let cool completely. Roll in powdered sugar again.

0 Tart Dough

I usually get requests for fruit tarts around Father’s Day. The most likely reason is the abundance of berries and other summertime fruits. I was pressed for time so my search for good fruit was limited to my nearby Mollie Stone’s market. The stone fruits were not quite ripe but they did have some ripe strawberries, blueberries and mangos. I normally add some kiwi for a splash of green but they were out. I got some Thompson green grapes instead.

I decided to try a new-to-me recipe for the tart dough. Instead of using the cutting-in method normally used for flaky pie dough, I wanted to try the blending method. The butter is creamed until soft and lump free and then the sugar is added and blended into the butter. The butter and sugar are not creamed together from the start because that would create too much air. Air is good for cookies and cakes but not so good for a tart dough. Then the flour is mixed in and ice water is added until the flour is just moistened. The dough needs to rest in the refrigerator just like you would do when cutting in. Sugar is a tenderizer so the dough can be a bit difficult to roll out. It was easier to just press the dough into my tart pans.

The recipe made enough dough to line one 10-inch tart pan and six 3-inch tartlet pans. I made a vanilla pastry cream to fill my tarts. As an experiment, I mixed in 3 tablespoons of Nutella into 1/3 cup of pastry cream to make one chocolate tartlet for my chocolate loving nephew.

Overall, I was very happy with the results. The crust was buttery, slightly sweet and crisp, almost like a cookie. And because of the sugar, the crust was tender but still sturdy enough to hold the fruit and pastry cream without getting soggy. I think I’ve found my new recipe for tart dough.



Tart Dough

½ lb (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temp.
7 tbsp granulated sugar
¼ tsp vanilla extract
¼ tsp salt
2 ½ cups all-purpose flour
1 ½ tsp cold water

In the bowl of a stand mixer, cream the butter until smooth and light in color, about 2 minutes on medium speed. Add the sugar, vanilla and salt and beat for another 2 minutes. On low speed, add the flour. Mix in just enough cold water to moisten the flour and the mixture forms pea-sized bits. Form dough into a disk and let rest in the refrigerator for 1 hour.

On a lightly floured surface, roll out dough to 1/8 inch thickness and line your tart pan. Alternatively, press dough into pan. Freeze or refrigerate lined tart pans until dough is firm, 10-20 minutes. Bake in a preheated 350 oven for 15 to 30 minutes depending on the size of your pan. If the dough bubbles while baking, pierce the bubble with a fork. Allow to cool completely in pan before filling.

0 Old Fashioned Peanut Butter Cookies

Peanut butter cookies are one of my favorites. This recipe makes a soft, chewy, super peanut-buttery cookie, just the way I like it. My co-worker J (who, btw, did not grow up eating peanut butter) liked the cookie but thought it seemed so plain. Yes, it’s true that these cookies don’t contain fancy ingredients. But I told her that’s the beauty of the traditional peanut butter cookie. Just simple, old-fashioned goodness.

Peanut Butter Cookies
(from David Lebovitz’s Room for Dessert)
makes 36 cookies

4 tbsp (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, at room temp.
½ cup granulated sugar
½ cup light brown sugar
1 cup creamy peanut butter
1 large egg
1 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
¼ tsp salt
1 tbsp baking powder

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Sift together the flour, salt and baking powder. Set aside.

Beat together butter, sugars, and peanut butter in the bowl of a standing mixer for 2 minutes at medium speed. Scrape the sides of the bowl and beat in the egg.

Mix in the dry ingredients until the dough starts to come together.

Shape the dough into 1-inch balls, roll them in sugar and place them 2 inches apart on a parchment lined cookie sheet. Mark the tops with a fork, crisscrossing and pressing down slightly.

Bake for 9-10 minutes until edges start to brown. Cool 5 minutes on sheet before transferring to cooling rack.

0 Apricot Squares

For no good reason at all, I was not excited when I first saw this recipe for apricot squares on Martha Stewart’s website. But if it was good enough for Martha, it must be good enough for me. My baking itch needed some scratching and I just happened to have a gigantic, Costco-sized bag of dried apricots and some walnuts in the pantry. Well, at the time, my pantry was not really a pantry. It consisted of 1 small kitchen drawer and half a wall shelf. And I didn’t store the aforementioned bag of apricots in my 'pantry'. It lived in the dining room. I still don’t have a proper pantry in our new place, but I digress…

I was pleasantly surprised with the outcome. I loved the buttery crust and the just-sweet-enough apricot filling. Family and friends (even those who claimed to hate walnuts) loved it. Maybe it’s because I finely chopped the walnuts so that the filling wasn’t too chunky. Maybe it’s magic. Maybe it’s because they’re just plain yummy.

I like to mix the crust and the filling by hand instead of using my KA stand mixer. Sometimes I find it therapeutic. They are delicious with or without the dusting of powdered sugar.




Apricot Squares
makes 16 squares

1/4 lb (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temp, plus more for pan
2/3 cup dried apricots
1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 cup light brown sugar, firmly packed
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract
1/4 tsp salt
confectioners’ sugar (for dusting)

Heat oven to 350°F. Butter an 8x8x2-inch baking pan; set aside.

Place apricots in a small saucepan with enough water to cover. Bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce heat to simmer, and cook until plumped, about 15 minutes. Drain in a fine sieve, and finely chop. Set aside.

Combine 1 cup flour, butter, and granulated sugar in a large bowl. Blend until crumbly and combined. Transfer mixture to prepared pan. Using your hands, pat evenly into pan. Bake until golden brown, about 25 minutes. Transfer to a rack to cool.

Combine remaining 1/3 cup flour, chopped apricots, brown sugar, eggs, walnuts, baking powder, vanilla, and salt. Mix until combined. Pour mixture over crust, and return to oven. Bake until top is golden, about 20 minutes.

Transfer to a wire rack to cool in the pan. Cut into 2-inch squares. Dust with confectioners’ sugar, and serve.