Cheese and Blueberry Filled Bread

It's nice to have a long, involved project to work on during Conference weekend so that I don't fall asleep listening to the nice talks. So this is what I made last weekend, I've wanted to try a sweet bread recipe and do something exciting with it. It worked pretty well, but I think I need to work on yeasted pastry dough recipe that will give me something more like the danishes from Pavel's in Pacific Grove, but I have no idea what to do differently. But this project was quite successful, so here's what I did.

Sweet Braided Bread with Cheese and Fruit Filling

SWEET BREAD DOUGH: (based on Cinnamon Bread recipe from "Beard on Bread")

2 cups milk
1 tbsp yeast
1/3 cup sugar
1 1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup (1 cube) butter, divided
5-6 cups all purpose flour

Scald the milk by heating it gently until it just starts steaming, or you see bubbles forming on the sides of the pan, set aside and let cool. Mix together yeast, sugar, 3 cups of the flour, salt, and the scalded milk, and 1/4 cup of the butter, softened, cut into smallish pieces. Mix thoroughly, let rest for a few minutes, then add the remaining 2-3 cups of flour. Knead for a couple of minutes, it should be just a tiny bit sticky still. Form the dough into a ball and let raise in a greased bowl until doubled.

While the dough is rising, prepare the cheese and blueberry fillings. (I used these recipe for the fillings, with a couple changes.)

BLUEBERRY FILLING:

2 cups blueberries (I used frozen)
1/4 cup sugar
1 Tbsp cornstarch (or even less)
juice of 1 lime, or about 1 Tbsp
zest of 1 lime (optional)

Combine all these ingredients in a small pan and heat gently, stirring constantly, until it starts to thicken, you may not even notice it boiling because there isn't a lot of liquid in there. Set aside and let cool.

CHEESE FILLING:
8 oz. cream cheese
1-2 Tbsp sugar, to taste
1 tsp lemon flavoring or vanilla, whichever you prefer

Combine all these ingredients in a small bowl, mix until smooth. Set aside.

Now back to the dough: Gently press the risen dough into a rectangle, smear half of the remaining butter (about 2 tablespoons) onto 2/3 of the dough, then fold the dough into thirds like a letter, then repeat with the remaining butter, this will layer the butter into the dough. Let rest in the fridge for a few minutes.

Roll the dough into a large rectangle, cut in half to make 2 rectangles, spread the cream cheese mixture evenly over the middle 3rd of the rectangles, half on each piece of dough, then spread the blueberry mixture over the cheese, half on each piece. Cut 1 inch tabs at an angle along the two sides of the rectangles. Alternate folding the tabs over the middle, to make something that looks like a braid. Cover with plastic, let it raise in the fridge until they are risen a bit. They will also do a lot of rising in the oven so they don't need to be huge.

Brush with an egg wash or milk just before baking. Bake at 425 for 10 minutes, reduce heat to 350 and continue to bake for 30 minutes or a little longer (I lost track of how long the second one was in, and it didn't collapse as much as the first one, which is the cooked one pictured. Let the loaves cool before slicing.

(non-alcoholic) Glöggfest

While in Germany, we had several feasting opportunities and accompanied our food with spiced juices, or non-alcoholic glögg, or just glögg for short. Apparently my in-laws have had a glögg tradition for years now and didn't realize it. Every year on the evening when they decorated their Christmas tree, they would have hot spiced apple cider and snacks, the perfect glöggfest. 

Making non-alcoholic glögg is super easy. Get your favorite fruit juice, add some whole spices, and heat it to just below boiling for an hour or so to let the spice flavors blend with the juice. It also smells good during this time, so don't rush, enjoy the process. 

Good juices to use: 

apple cider

blackcurrant juice

blueberry juice 

cranberry juice 

pomegranate juice

grape juice 

orange/citrus juices  

blends of any of those 

anything else you can imagine (for example, I saw some rhubarb juice in a German grocery store, that could make an awesome spiced drink too)

Good spices to use:

cinnamon stick

black peppercorn (trust me on this one - so good!)

cardamom 

fresh ginger

orange peel 

whole allspice 

star anise  

whole cloves 

Sweeten with sugar or honey, if desired. 

I didn't get any pictures of spiced juice, but I can tell you that it looks a lot like normal juice. So I'll send you to the virtual goody plate where she has pictures and specific recipes for more spiced juices. Like cranberry (good hot or cold) and grapefruit (why didn't I think of this?).

Blueberry Mascarpone Turnovers

I really need a good pastry fix, and these turnovers will do in a pinch. These have a cheese filling (mascarpone cheese, lemon zest and juice, sugar and cornstarch) topped with blueberries. Made with puff pastry from the frozen aisle.

Fold puff pastry over fillings and sprinkle with sugar or cinnamon sugar. Bake at 375 for about 20 minutes (the puff pastry should have instructions for how long to bake it) and the fillings might explode everywhere. I'm not sure how to fix the exploding, but the cornstarch helps a little bit.

More Pie!

In case you haven't noticed, pie is one of my favorite things to make and eat and share with friends, as well as just look at and read about. I used the leftover berries from my berry pickin/jamming adventure to make a crazy delicious pie. I used boysenberries, olallieberries, and blackberries. I learned a trick from my grandma to use tapioca to thicken the juices instead of flour or cornstarch. It's a little funky, but it works well and is good because it doesn't have the yucky cornstarch or raw flour taste.

Berry Pie

pie crust dough for 2 crusts or enough for a bottom and a lattice top

4-5 cups berries of your choice, fresh or frozen

3/4 cup sugar or more, if you like it sweeter

lemon zest from one lemon, or less as you like it

2 teaspoons lemon juice

1/4 cup instant tapioca pearls

Roll out the dough and place in the pie pan, trim the dough so that a little of it overhangs the pan, a little less than an inch. Keep the dough well chilled. Roll out the dough for the top half or the lattice, keep it chilled as well. Mix together 3 1/2 or 4 cups of the berries, sugar, zest, juice and tapioca pearls together, pour into the pie shell, and top with remaining berries, as much as you want, but don't overfill it. I just discovered that it is nice to have extra whole berries to put on top that aren't disintigrating because of the sugar and the stirring, it makes it look really nice. Arrange the top crust, cutting vents, or make the lattice top. Fold the excess dough under itself, and crimp the edges. If desired, you can brush the top with milk and sprinkle with a little coarse-grained sugar, to make it extra pretty and sparkly.

Bake at 425 for 40-50 minutes, until the filling is very bubbly and the crust is toasty brown. Check the bottom crust if you are using a glass pan, it should be brown and cooked looking as well. If the bottom isn't cooked, but the top crust is getting too brown, you may want to make a foil tent or rim to put over it, well vented, and let it bake a little longer. No one likes a soggy doughy bottom crust. When the pie is completely cooked, try to not devour it right away, let it cool so that it can set up. Get together with friends and serve with a nice French vanilla ice cream if desired. Eat the leftovers for breakfast.

What do you do in the Summertime?

Pretty much every summer that I can remember my mom has made jam and I helped. Sometimes we find a great deal on some fruit, so we buy a ton and make jam like crazy for a day or two. It's great. Last year my mom and I picked apricots from Lovemuffin's grandma's tree, and we made seventeen batches of apricot jam. It was pretty incredible. We're still eating it. Lovemuffin's cousin also made a couple of batches, she tried a recipe that didn't call for pectin, so it needed less sugar and then you boil it for a long time so it's more like very thick syrup, but quite tasty, because it is fruitier. This year the fruit I got wasn't free, but I got a good deal because I picked my own. A couple of ladies from church and myself went up to the Gizdich Ranch in Watsonville to pick berries and it was great fun. I ended up with 19 pounds of boysenberries and about 5 pounds of olallieberries. By the way, when you say "olallieberries," it sounds like "lalaberries," even though Wikipedia says you pronounce it "oh-la-leh." Olallieberries are some sort of hybrid, you'll have to look at the little chart. Too complicated. Anyway, they make a good jam and a good pie, but they are a little tart for eating fresh, not quite like blackberries or raspberries, or even boysenberries. Those boysenberries on the bushes were so big and pretty, I just had to keep picking them, and the two women I was with helped, and that's how I ended up with 19 pounds.
When I got home that night I made two batches of jam the regular way, with the pectin and the whole lot of sugar, and then darling Lovemuffin saw how much sugar it was and thought we should try something different. Which was weird. He's never been one to be concerned about his sugar intake. I started looking up recipes for pectin free jam, and in my vast research (read, about half an hour of web surfing) I decided that I would try a small batch using one part fruit, and one part sugar, and a little lemon. And it worked really well! It set up well, it's nice and fruity, not too sweet, and you can do a pretty big batch all at once instead of having to do a lot of small batches over and over again. Which is kind of nice, but it's also nice to have small batches to process in the hot water bath, so that you can fit all of the jars in at the same time.
Here's what I did for my larger batch that worked really well:

Less Sugar Boysenberry Jam
11 cups mashed boysenberries
1 lemon, zest and juice
11 cups sugar

Place mashed berries and lemon zest and juice in a large pot, and bring to a gentle boil. Add sugar slowly, stirring with a very long handled wooden spoon. Bring it back to a full boil and let boil for 10-20 minutes, or longer if you aren't at sea level. The texture of the bubbles will change. If that makes sense. I took some videos, but I'm having a hard time posting them, there are some pictures that might give you the right idea, and I'll try to describe it. The bubbles become more caramelly and persistant. When the sugared fruit starts boiling, it looks pretty much like water at a full boil, and then when it is ready to set up, therer are more bubbles constantly, it is hard to tell when one pops and another takes its place.
Before:

















After:

When the jam changes in this way, ladle it into clean jars, wipe the top and put on the lids and rings, and process in boiling water. I did mine for 10 minutes and the lids popped right as I took them out of the water. If you are at a higher altitude, process for longer. This batch set right up and I really like the texture of it without the pectin. The pectin-free jam made from berries seems different than the one from apricots, less like syrup and more like regular jam. Probably the berries have a lot more natural pectin in them than apricots. Another thing I have heard that you can try to make pectin-free jam is to use a quince in it, because quinces are supposed to have a huge amount of natural pectins. Maybe I'll try that sometime too. I have to say a big THANK YOU! to Lovemuffin's cousin, for introducing me to a new method of making jam. It's really fun to know that you can experiment with jam and it will still taste good, even if it doesn't set up exactly the same as it would if you follow exactly the recipe from the pectin boxes.