Peach Coffee Cake

Christmas Day I wanted to make coffee cake. Flipping though the King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking cookbook I saw a recipe for peach coffee cake that tempted me.

I didn't follow the recipe, but started with it.

I heated some dried cranberries in some orange liqueur  then added a large can of peaches, drained and coarsely diced.

In a bowl I sifted together

• 2 1/2 Cup white whole wheat flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking soda

In the mixer I creamed together:

• 1 cube butter (1/2 cup)
• 1 cup toasted sugar
• 1 large egg
• 2 tsp vanilla extract

I set at the ready:

• 1 cup whole milk (recipe called for buttermilk)

Added and mixed until combined 1/3 of the dry mix and 1/3 cup of the milk in turns.

Then folded in the Peach mixture just until mixed in.

Poured this into buttered 9x13 casserole dish. 

Topped with mixture of:

• 2 tbs butter
• 1/2 cup toasted sugar
• 1 Tbs sweet spice mixture (in this case cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, grains of paradise, cubebs)
• 1 drop sweet orange essential oil

Bake at 250 for 35 mins, then cool 20 mins on wire rack. 

Ended up with a fragrant, moist cake. 

Vanilla recipe

I have been enjoying my homemade vanilla that I had posted about earlier. Now that it has developed a nice color and flavor and has been refreshed a number of times, I thought it would be good to revisit the subject.

The vanilla recipe I used came from make some vanilla extract.

Pictured is my current stock.

Here is how it looked when first assembled.

I picked up some Indian vanilla beans from Stone Cottage (my favorite spice store), and some cheap vodka from my local liquor store.

Black Sauce Experiments

We made some Black Sauce in a medieval food class I took this weekend. I used it up last night.

So I made some more this evening to have with some meat and cheese. This batch I made with almond meal, red wine vinegar, my pepper spice blend, ginger, and galangal.

I want to do some experiments to determine My Favorite Black Sauce mix

• bread crumbs | almond meal | hazlenut meal
• Toasted | untoasted
• round pepper | long pepper | tail pepper | grains of paradise | a blend
• red wine vinegar | white wine vinegar | cider vinegar | balsamic | verjus
• ginger | galangal | both
• whole thing cooked | fresh 

I don't think I will try all 900 combinations. 

I suppose I'll do two passes of varying individual variables and just keep my best choices to date. 

I still need to decide which order to test the variables. 

...

Update (7/21/2013):

I tried making black sauce at a recent camping event using gluten free bread crumbs and did not like the result. Eulalia speculated that in the process of toasting the GF bread crumbs the xanthan gum  became bitter. 

Vanilla Extract

Ran out of vanilla the other day, so I thought it would be a good time to make some vanilla extract.

Unfortunately it won't be ready for 2 months.