Killer Zebras test recipe 3

Ok, these ones turned out really well. So cute! Great chocolate flavor and texture like shortbread. Didn't spread at all while baking (higher temperature and shorter baking time - don't know if that is what did the trick). However, perhaps they were just a tad dry.

The recipe was from the cookbook "277 sorters kakor":

80 g powdered sugar + 20 g vanilla sugar, 300 g butter, and 400 g flour. That's it. Oh, and 20 g of cocoa in half of the dough.

I need to re-do my spreadsheet and put everything in the metric system so I can compare ratios. So far, recipe number 2 was the most popular with the family. I liked this one better.

Killer Zebra test recipe 2

So much better but not perfect

This time I used the recipe for Icebox cookies from Cooks Illustrated:
2.5 cups flour, 1/2 tsp salt, 1 cup unsalted butter, 3/4 cup granulated sugar, 1/2 cup confectioner's sugar, 2 large egg yolks, 2 tsp vanilla extract.

The chocolate recipe version reduces to flour to 2 cups and you whisk in 1/4 cup cocoa and then add 2 oz. melted chocolate to the batter. i.e. there is 4 times as much chocolate in this recipe than in my first (if I remember correctly).

I divided each dough into 4 pieces and mushed them together in the hope that it would look like Zebra stripes. Not 100% happy. Next time I will roll out the dough in several layers to make stripes, but squish them together somehow since they shouldn't be perfectly straight (I think).

The results were: soooo much more chocolately flavor. They didn't spread as much (although more than to my liking, but that could be due to thickness or oven temperature maybe?). Maybe I need to cut them much smaller but thicker. I wish they were less crispy and more melt in the mouth-y.

I have continued to expand on my spreadsheet with Swedish recipes for icebox cookies. 2 out of 3 that I found don't use eggs at all. One of them uses confectioner's sugar but the other two use granulated. I am going to try the recipe for "Brysselkex" (Brussels cookies but not like American Brussels cookies - these are like shortbread but with more butter). This is supposedly known as 1-3-4 dough by bakers, since there is 1 part sugar, 3 parts butter, and 4 parts flour. HOWEVER I have not been able to find any other example of this online so I'm wondering if it's not a mistake in the cookbook. I have found 1-2-3 dough. Well, I am going to give it a chance anyway (might add extra chocolate though).

Killer Zebras test recipe 1



 

 

Now on to the next challenge: Sunshine's Killer Zebra cookies

 

Here’s hoping it won’t take a whole year like the cinnamon rolls. Getting those right nearly sank me.

As I have previously written, I am not alone in my obsession. One person named her company "Killer Zebras" after Sunshine.

Killer Zebras

Killer Zebras are based on Pinwheel cookies, i.e. vanilla and chocolate cookie dough: in the case of pinwheels, the dough would be in a spiral pattern.

 

My trip down the Internet rabbit hole plus several cookbooks, has taught me that these can be formed into stripes (aka simple zebra pattern), crazy stripes (i.e. Killer Zebras), marbled, checkered, oh yes…the list goes on and on. Robin McKinley writes that she based them on ”Harlequin” cookies, which are the above-mentioned cookies in yet another pattern:

"Killer Zebras certainly exist.  I’m also bemused that this, with Death of Marat, are probably the two that get asked for the most often.  Death of Marat, as above, is vexed.  But I can absolutely give you Killer Zebras, with perhaps some head-scratching and furrowedness of brow, because they’re really only slightly dressed-up what-you-call-’em, I think I first met them in an old Betty Crocker cookbook under the name Harlequin Cookies.  You make a basic cookie dough, divide it in half, add chocolate to one, and then roll each out and squidge ’em together.  But I’ll post that recipe.  One of these days." 

I wish.

This blogger has a great description of how to make Zebra cookies (although I wonder about her recipe...we'll see once I start my testing....) Killer zebra recipe

And lookie here!  Another Killer Zebra fan I can see that the BBC recipe she used was all wrong.

Since my cinnamon roll spread sheet was the key to coming up with the ultimate recipe, I decided to do the same for the pinwheel cookie recipes. I found recipes in three of my cookbooks, and compared these with regular shortbread, as well as with recipes I found online, including Swedish versions of these cookies (so famous they got their own stamps last year! See the pinwheels, plus the checkered version?!). I have to admit that I do not own a Swedish cookie cookbook and I must get one ASAP since the recipes online are dubious.

 

  

It quickly became obvious that the basic recipe for pinwheels differs from shortbread in that there is more sugar, plus the addition of eggs and baking powder, as well as vanilla and cocoa.

The ratios differed in the recipes but the most common amounts were:

1 cup butter
1.5 cups sugar or 1.3 cups superfine sugar (perhaps powdered sugar would be ok?)
2 eggs
2.5-3 cups flour
½ tsp baking powder
2 tsp vanilla
2 oz cocoa powder

The recipes say to divide the dough in two, and then blend in the cocoa in one half. I can imagine all kinds of trouble from this step: how will the powder be evenly mixed? Won’t the dough be overworked and become tough? Isn’t it better to make two batches of dough (1 for vanilla and 1 for chocolate)? That way you could mix the cocoa with the dry ingredients and avoid those problems. I really can’t wait to be able to test my theories…

Ok, I'm going to test it today. I will post the recipes. One of these days...

Finally! Cinnamon rolls as big as your head ultimate recipe

Today I re-read Robin McKinley's comments on cinnamon rolls where she said they should just be good old white bread rolled around cinnamon sugar. That made me realize that the Cinnabon-type recipes I tried were all wrong: too sweet, too gooey, too much of everything.

I realized that I would have to make a spread sheet in order to get some understanding of what was wrong with the cinnamon roll recipes I was trying. I made three categories: Swedish cinnamon rolls, American cinnamon rolls, and white bread. One recipe in each row, and in columns were the different ingredients.

After comparing over 20 recipes I realized that the rolls I had tried were more like American dinner rolls, with lots of butter, sugar, eggs, and salt in the dough.

However, one American recipe: "Sweet-Roll Dough" caught my eye since it had less butter and sugar. I found it in the Fanny Famer Baking Book by Marion Cunningham:

In the spread sheet I noticed that the dough ingredients from that recipe were almost the same as another recipe I found online:
Leila's American sticky buns

I sort of combined the recipes and tested this:
1 pkg yeast (25 g fresh yeast), 1/4 cup butter, about 3/4 cup milk, 1/4 cup sugar, 1/4 tsp. salt, 3 cups flour, 1 egg. In the filling I used 1/4 cup butter, 1/2 cup brown sugar, and 3/4 Tbs. cinnamon. Instead of a cream cheese frosting I made a vanilla glaze: 1 cup powdered sugar, 1 Tbs. softened butter, 1/2 tsp vanilla, and enough milk to make it into an icing.

Next time I will cut down the butter in the filling to less than 1/4 cup - that much isn't needed. I will also roll the dough more tightly, since I noticed that a lot of filling melted into the bottom of the pan (hmmm...more searching on how to avoid this will be needed I guess).

The rolls were just perfect: more like a fluffy white bread, with a lovely cinnamon flavor (it could be increased but I noticed before that 1 Tbs cinnamon was grainy). I cut the dough into 8 rolls instead of 10 to make them extra big.

I will write a proper recipe soon but I just had to write this so I wouldn't forget. I can truly imagine Sunshine serving these!

Back to cinnamon bun business

I happened upon a list of cinnamon roll recipes the other day on some site (Huffington Post perhaps?) and one of the links was this:

Perhaps ultimate Cinnamon Roll recipe?

Not only does this recipe make just 8 rolls (thus they will be larger than 12, approaching head-size perhaps?) their icing sounds more like what I'm looking for: less creaminess and more crunch (no added butter and more sugar).

And the origin of the recipe is supposedly Cooks Illustrated, which I have found to be one of the absolute best sources for good recipes. I need to get a subscription again! I listen to their podcast America's Test Kitchen Radio and it is an amazing source of information and laughs.

How could I not have found this recipe in my quest? Is it because they are called "buns" instead of "rolls"?

The butter is downstairs softening. Time for perhaps my last test, so that I can check at least one recipe off my list?

UPDATE:

Complete disaster. When the liquid was added to the flour mixture it became a dry cement-like mess. Impossible to add butter to it. I ended up throwing it away. I read that it was supposed to be a brioche-like recipe but there must have been somthing wrong with it, or it must be difficult to make brioches?...

So I thought I would instead go back to my original recipe (Test recipe 1) and adjust it according to my first comments, and use the filling and glaze from the above recipe. Well, that dough turned out beautifully so I am going to keep that. I let it rise to twice its size and also baked it a few minutes longer than before and it turned out very fluffy - perfect. Test recipe 1 dough is the best (this time I used unsalted butter and added 1 tsp salt to the dough - I think either unsalted or salted is fine).

The filling had too much brown sugar and cinnamon, even when I cut back, so that is still a problem. 1/4 cup of butter is perfect. Next time I'll try 3/4 cup brown sugar and 1 Tbs. cinnamon.

The glaze contained no butter this time but more sugar and vanilla. Delicious.

I actually made 12 rolls since I'm thinking of bringing them to work tomorrow.

I think one more test of this recipe and I will have the ultimate Sunshine rolls.

Blah

Project not going well. Last attempt at a recipe was not a success (peanut butter shortbread).

Plus my weight is at an all-time high so the thought of baking goodies doesn't really tempt me.

However, I will not give up my project.

I need a new strategy.

Yesterday was the National Cinnamon Roll Day in Sweden but I just felt guilty eating one.

Boo.

How will I continue this project and not balloon any more? (I am starting to look like one). I don't like menopause.

Breadfarm visit

One great thing I got to do while visiting the States was going behind the scenes at a real bakery. It was a national bakery day (or something) so certain bakeries around the country were celebrating by opening their doors and showing customers around.

Even though my mom doesn't know I'm obsessed with Sunshine, she booked a tour for our family of a bakery in Edison, Washington, called Breadfarm.

This field trip was a dream come true for me. It was an unseasonally warm day in little Edison, which basically consists of one little curvy road (ok, not really true but if you just drive through then that is what you'll remember). Outside of the bakery we were greeted by a women who checked us off her list, and then offered a tray of goodies for us to choose from (why oh why had I eaten such a big lunch that day?). I chose a huge croissant which melted in my mouth. It turned out that it wasn't just our family, but several groups who were going for the tour, so we were divided into three large groups and were then shown the process of creating baguettes: making the dough, shaping it and then baking it.

They also had cookies but by the time I got around to trying one I was not hungry at all so it was really wasted on me. The cookies were quite rustic looking and thick.

When we were in the back of the bakery I tried to soak up the ambience for future reference, observing the workers while they made bread (there must have been at least 10 bakers in the back.) I was thinking of Sunshine all the while, and wondering if any of the bakers there had read it, as well if any of their tattoos were wards...

Cinnamon roll hints from Robin McKinley

Ok, so I googled a bit more and found this:

http://robinmckinley.livejournal.com/10712.html

I must try adding some vanilla extract to the dough....

Her agent wanted her to work on recipes even BEFORE the book was published???...sigh...



Yes, I know this is a fictional character
in a book but if someone can do this:

http://lotrproject.com/

then I don't think I need to feel guilty about my little project...

Reading instead of baking

Today I finished part one.

I need to test overnight cinnamon rolls. I have googled this and one person wrote that the slow rising process helps the flavor. But I suspect people use this method so that they have fresh rolls in the morning! (or perhaps bakers would do this to avoid getting up even earlier?!). Who knew that there would be tons of websites on this subject? I also discovered that there are several cookbooks on cinnamon rolls and sticky buns (and cinnamon rolls are actually NOT my favorite baked goodie!). I have a feeling this project is going to take longer than I imagined....alas, I have committed myself to this and I will not give up, even after being overwhelmed by the world of cinnamon rolls.


Still shooting the movie in my imagination. I would have this song for the closing credits. Not that I am anywhere near the end of the book. Slightly ironic but it would be perfect.






We are still eating up the first batch of cinnamon rolls.

Definitely too much cinnamon with 2 1/2 Tbs. in 12 large rolls.

Another picture inspired by part one:

Sunshine in my backpack makes me happy (sorry John Denver)

I haven't had time to try any new recipes but I have had some things on my mind regarding cinnamon rolls. First, there is the cinnamon question. How much is too much and what kind to use? Apparently there are different kinds and one kind can cause liver damage in some people! And there is a LOT of cinnamon in many recipes.

Then the egg conundrum. 1 or 2?

Thirdly, the "let it rise for around an hour or let it rise overnight in the fridge" puzzle, which probably has some logical answer but I haven't found it yet.

And finally the yeast problem. I thawed out a roll from my test batch and it might have tasted a little yeasty.

I was reading the part where Sunshine changes her pocketknife into a key on the bus this morning and this couple in front of me was making out (at 7 am!). How they had the energy I don't know. It was very distracting (and noisy) so I ended up re-reading the same part over and over ... which is ok since I love that part of the book so much. Afterwards, I had that scene in my head (not the slobbering couple, but the scene in the book) so I decided to really nerd out and make fan art. Yes, I am a nerd but I have never made fan art except for the drawings of R2D2 etc that I did in my pre-teen years. I have never used Photoshop before so it was interesting playing around. I found the coolest background from Flikr (creative commons license to use).

So ... today I learned how to give photographs transparent backgrounds! COOL. So far in the book there is no description of the key and I don't remember if there is one later so I found a key that had a tree-like design at the top which I thought would be appropriate since Sunshine feels that her evolving use of magic is like a sapling growing into a tree.

On a roll...

Oh how I love Sunshine. Reading it on the bus to work this morning and on the way home. It is a ward against the blues.

This song ("Specially for you") would be on the soundtrack if I were making the movie (which I am currently shooting in my imagination).




Check out Dakhabrakha!

As I was pondering cinnamon rolls yesterday I remembered that Sunshine put the dough in the fridge overnight, which is something I've never done. This warrants further investigation...

Sunshine is not cozy but cinnamon rolls are

You might get the idea from my first post that Sunshine is a feel-good, cozy book since it is a comfort to read it. It is not cozy. It is a comfort to read it, not due to romance or descriptions of baked goods, but since the hero (is it politically uncorrect to write "heroine"?) of the story is a young woman who is not perfect, who struggles and overcomes obstacles despite her flaws. There are many reviews online but I would avoid reading them if I hadn't read the book since they often give away too many plot details: "As someone who likes ambiguity in their characters, who likes to make up their own mind, and has loved the story of Beauty and The Beast since childhood Sunshine is one of my favourite novels. It is the ultimate in comfort reading on the days when I am convinced that the world hates me. It inspires me to get out my own baking trays and make muffins, iced buns and other comfort foods to feed my family and friends." (from http://voices.yahoo.com/a-review-sunshine-robin-mckinley-5451265.html)

I will be spoiling big time in this blog so read no further if you haven't read the book.

This is the only book in the whole vampire genre which I have liked (adored), besides Anne Rice's books which I read in the 80s. One reason is that it is dark and messy, in many ways. There is no neat ending and more questions are raised than answers given. This drives some people nuts (seems like the number one reader question to Robin McKinley is "will there be a sequel?" ---followed by requests for recipes!). I would of course love to read more in Sunshine's world but I think the book ended perfectly.

But back to cinnamon rolls.

On page one, Sunshine mentions her coffeshop's most popular item: "Cinnamon Rolls as Big as Your Head". I am re-reading the book and am currently on p. 40 (paperback from 2003). And so far, no more detailed description of these rolls has been given-maybe later, I can't remember...

The first time I encountered HUGE cinnamon rolls was when I was at "Carol's Coffee Cup" in Deming, Washington (must have been the 1990s). At least that is the first time I remember being blown away by the size. They must have been at least 4 or 5 inches high. I guess this would be similar to the Cinnabon rolls. (Hmm...interesting. According to Wikipedia Cinnabon originated in Washington.)

My thought is that Sunshine's rolls would be similar in size to these. Robin McKinley seems to want to leave a lot to the reader's imagination (or is ambivalent ...).
So a Cinnabon-similar roll is what I imagine. I had actually never baked anything like this before. In Sweden cinnamon rolls are traditionally the size of your palm and are sprinkled with a special type of sugar (pärlsocker...just looked it up and it is apparently called "nib sugar".). No glaze. I found a Cinnabon-like recipe and used a glaze from another recipe (it contained more cream cheese than the original - which I will change next time since it became too creamy, and I would like it to be just a bit more sugary so that it hardens to a slight crust on top).

If you google "Cinnabon recipe" then you will find several. I guess these would be classified as sticky buns in the old days (sort of) but without the sticky, nutty layer. Strangely I have no memory of eating cinnamon rolls earlier than in the late 1980s. Cinnamon toast yes, but not rolls.

Yeast is a problem since it seems like dried yeast in Sweden is different than dried yeast in the States. I used fresh, compressed yeast and I'm never sure if I'm using the correct amount. I might buy some yeast from the English shop in Stockholm and see if there is any difference.

This is the result. In Sweden the filling is made with regular white sugar (and cinnamon and butter of course), but in the States it seems that brown sugar is used. How this could have escaped me for so many years is a mystery. It was really delicious of course. But I won't be satisfied until I try another cinnamon roll recipe or two...

Fellow Sunshine cinnamon roll bakers:

http://www.passingpinwheels.com/2012/03/cinnamon-rolls-not-as-big-as-your-head.html

http://lauren.merrywednesday.org.uk/pictures/3/cinnamon-rolls-as-big-as-your-head

http://lingfree.wordpress.com/2013/02/09/new-project-sunshines-pastries/

http://hungrybloggers.com/article/cinnamon-rolls

http://msbarrows.tumblr.com/post/25282041046

http://lanternhollowpress.com/2011/04/12/fantasy-and-food-even-frodo-had-to-eat/

And here is a person who has adapted recipes for a creative writing class. Sometimes this link works and sometimes not.

http://vectors.umwblogs.org/2012/03/14/sunshine-sunshines-recipes/

My Sunshine baking obsession

I love how the internet makes us realize that we are not alone with what we might think are strange interests (ok - that is too mild a word..."obsessions" is the right one).

This all started for me when a book about teenage vampires was published. I did not get past the first few chapters and while reading the one star reviews on Amazon, I discovered that I was not alone. In one review someone mentioned the book "Sunshine" by Robin McKinley as being vastly superior. It was. And that is how my obsession began.

In Sunshine, the main character Rae/Sunshine is a baker in a coffee shop. I have been obsessed with baking since I was old enough to be unsupervised in the kitchen. I go through yearly phases when I am determined to, for example, bake the "ultimate" peanut butter cookie (I will try several recipes but give up since I'm never satisfied. The freezer will be full though and my family is happy to eat up the rejects). Since I moved from the States to Sweden 20 plus years ago, my baking attempts are always a challenge since the flour, etc. is slightly different and of course measurements are not the same. I could write an entire blog on my attempts of finding the perfect recipe of whatever, but this is about Sunshine.

When I read Sunshine the first time (I read it yearly - especially when I'm feeling down) I was overwhelmed by the sort of stream-of-consciousness narration, so I gave up half way. For some reason, I gave it a second chance, and that was when I got hooked. A few years after I discovered it, I wrote down all the names of the baked goods she describes, and thought it would be fun to try to bake a few. Then I found Robin McKinley's blog, and a section called "Playing with your food", as well as her forum for cooking with a section about Sunshine and I discovered that there are many of us who have thought the same things, have written lists of Sunshine's baked goodies, etc. These are my people!

http://www.robinmckinleysblog.com/recipes/


http://robinmckinleysblog.com/forum/index.php?t=msg&th=2580&start=0&

I have been feeling really stressed lately and couldn't find a good book, so it was time to re-read Sunshine. But this time, I had to start my baking experiment.

Here goes...