Let the baking begin! It's January!

After sitting in my chair playing phone games, watching movies, and sleeping in during the Christmas vacation, my brain was not ready to come up with new bakes for the month. 

So yeah, I used AI prompts to come up with some ideas for baking this year. I know some of you may be annoyed or incredulous by this, but I took half a dozen classes on using AI to my advantage and why not have fun with it?

 Some of the ideas were laughable like dulce de leche fortune cookies, and some of them actually seemed like a cool idea. For this week I took all the suggestions and added the shortbread cookie with orange, which in China is good luck for their new year.  More on that later...

BREAD:
The bread was meant to be a "fiber forward" loaf filled with seeds and organic honey.That sounded a lot like the multigrain seeded bread I made in culinary school, so I just got my sourdough starters fired up and made that. I didn't have much trouble finding the organic honey, and I'm not sure if the flavor is any different, but the bread turned out moist despite the amount of whole grains and seeds.  I was surprised that sunflower seeds are toasted. Guess that makes some sense, must nuts and seeds are to help them last longer.

Organic Honey & Seeded Whole Wheat Bread.

MUFFIN:
The next suggestion was a sourdough bran muffin with dates. I always wondered what made up a bran muffin. My assumption was that it was ground up raisin bran, much like my assumption was that graham flour was made of graham crackers. But how were those made?

I dug up a few recipes and yes you can find a muffin that uses the cereal, but I chose one that was using basic ingredients, such as wheat bran, it turns out. 

What is wheat bran? When you look at a wheat kernel, the hard outer layer part of the kernel is the bran, and that's what all these bran cereals and muffins are made of. I've always loved the flavor, it's hard to describe, kind of like the sweet side of umami if you can imagine that. 

I had dates that I could add, and the only question was, how to add the sourdough part of it. I decided we were looking for the tang of the sourdough flavor, so I added some starter into the mix. Muffins are leavened or made to "rise" with baking soda or powder, not yeast. So a muffin with any yeast is not what I usually see. (That's why they are what I would consider one of the easiest and fastest bakes to make. )

Ok another confession: I messed up and bought extra large cupcake papers, to which I can only say, when you order stuff on your phone you can make mistakes. The pics really are small.  Here is my attempt at using them anyway.

I decided to put two scoops of batter in each paper and separate them so they didn't mash each other. They turned out amazing anyway, they're just REALLY big!

Sourdough Bran Muffins with Dates.

COFFEE CAKE:
Okay so now, on to the coffee cake. The idea behind this one was the flavor of peanut butter and jelly sandwich only in a coffee cake. I do not actually like eating peanut butter, nor peanuts. I don't have an allergy I just never liked it. But, much like how the hubby doesn't like the taste of coffee but he loves the smell, I love the smell of peanuts. 

In this recipe idea, I was to use black currants for the jammy middle. However, I suspect currants are not in season this time of year and I couldn't even find dried currants nor jam. Nothing. I went to Kroger of course since I was already there, and scoured the jam aisle, the fresh produce, even the raisin aisle, which is not the same from one store to another by the way. One puts them by the nuts and another puts them next to the oatmeal.  

Anyway, I ended up braving Whole Foods on a Saturday. Yes I am brave. And after circling a little, I found the one remaining parking spot and dove in. 

The walk in was treacherous because of all the roaming cars, but I finally got in and grabbed a handheld basket. They had the wheat bran but it was up high. I am only 5 ft 4 inches so there was no way I could reach it on the top shelf. So I had to go find an employee and ask him to help. Stores, on behalf of short people: May I suggest you leave some stools around so customers can reach stuff up high? I know kids would probably mess that up but I don't love having to ask for help reaching something.  While I had him there I asked for directions to the jam aisle. He pointed the way and off I went. 

If having to get help reaching something wasnt embarrassing enough, another worker spotted that I actually had two hand held baskets and one was about to drop. But I didn't think he was talking to me, until the clatter of the second basket fell to the ground. I exclaimed, "Oh! I didn't realize you were talking to me!" and we both laughed as he took my extra. At least they are very nice there at WF. 

I found the jam aisle and even though I ended up with a cool pineapple something or other jam for my efforts, I did not see a black Currant. Sigh. Ok so I got everything else between the two stores, I was going to have to figure something else out. But I felt an inner tug to check the produce section, just to see what they had. I mean I'd braved long traffic, parking lot congestion, and scouring two stores for these black Currants. 

 And believe it or not they had red currants. I decided that the flavor was not going to be the same exactly, the black ones being more sweet than tart, but that I would boil them with some raisins ( you know the grape jelly flavor? raisins are made of grapes?) and make a filling that resembled something you'd put in a peanut butter sandwich. 

After looking up my cinnamon streusel coffee cake, I figured I could remove the cinnamon and add peanut butter to the mix, and make the streusel with peanuts crushed in. It was a good basis to create something new from. 

Turns out this baby was so big it filled a quarter sheet baking pan (those 9x13 pans you probably have) which is big for a coffee cake. I put half the batter down, spread on the Currant raisin jam and topped with the rest of the batter, then covered it in the streusel and baked. It took an hour. This thing was massive. 

The next day I cut it up and served up some to the hubby. It was a winner!

Black Currant & Peanut Streusel Coffee Cake

COOKIE:
So why are Oranges lucky in China?

"Oranges and tangerines are lucky in Chinese New Year because their names sound like "gold" and "luck," their golden-orange color symbolizes wealth, and their round shape means completeness, making them symbols of prosperity, good fortune, and family unity, often exchanged in pairs to double the blessings. They represent wishes for abundance, happiness, and long life, with leaves symbolizing fertility and growth. "

My favorite orange cookie is an orange poppyseed shortbread. I've been feeling more artistic lately so I thought it would look really cool if I drizzle half the cookie with an orange flavored reddish orange glaze and add some black sesame seeds to make it stand out. 

Here they are: 

Lucky Orange poppyseed shortbread cookies

So from me to you, wishing you a happy and lucky new year. I hope you get to have fun and learn something new this week. And I hope you enjoyed coming with me on my weekend baking adventures!