Saturday, April 27, 2019

Dozen Yolk Braided Bread

This Dozen Yolk Braided Bread is sweetened with honey and made rich and tender with twelve egg yolks and a hint of soy milk (non traditional but tasty!). Whole wheat bread flour ups the nutrition and the flavour profile as well.


After baking the delicious Angel Food Cake for my birthday, I was left with a lot of egg yolks. Seeing as how we already had enough cake to open a small bakery (between my cake, my sister's three-layer chocolate birthday cake and the vanilla cupcakes Mom always makes for special occasions), making pound cake or another dessert (like custard) wasn't practical. I spent an afternoon googling alternate uses, and soon I came across a recipe for Challah using eight yolks. That seemed like a good starting point, but I also had soy milk on hand that was about to turn, so I modified the Challah into a soft, rich braided bread sprinkled with sesame seeds and perfumed with orange zest, vanilla and honey.

The recipe makes two huge loaves, which is great if you're my family who goes through bread like it's going out of style, and it freezes beautifully as well. Depending on the humidity and the type of flour you have on hand, you may need extra flour to get the dough come together - you want it tacky but not wet, and it should clear the sides of your mixing bowl. Once it was cool enough to slice (an agonizing wait for Mom) at least two pieces "disappeared" along with some homemade grape jam. The sweet, eggy flavour is primed for a fresh fruity Toast Topper, as well as a smear of butter. Since I've made the angel food cake once more, I have a feeling the freezer is about to get another round of this treat!

Monday, April 8, 2019

Gluten Free, Sugar Free Vanilla Bean Angel Food Cake


Made my first birthday cake in 10 years - a Gluten Free, Sugar Free Vanilla Bean Angel Food Cake. Sweetened with a blend of monkfruit and stevia, its still light, fluffy and sweet. Perfect for topping with fresh fruit!


Happy birthday to me! I typically have a blase attitude about my birthdays for a few reasons. Like most people, I'm usually working on the day itself, and if I'm not is often because it's Easter - a fact that my dad and sister also have to deal with (we're all super close date wise). Combined with the fact that birthday cake's heavy reliance on the two elements I don't digest well - fat and gluten - birthday cakes are also not really something I had to look forward to. However, that all changed this year, when I not only found a fat free and gluten free recipe that tasted fantastic, but a sugar free one too!

I am a huge believer in taste coming to the forefront, and thankfully my history with baking gluten free served me well in preventing a cake that tasted like the stereotypical gluten free cardboard - especially in the absence of a ton of fat. For me, the secret lay in layers of vanilla - vanilla bean, vanilla extract and vanilla flavoured stevia, which made each bite perfumed with the flavour but not in an overwhelming or "fake" way. In fact, I was pleasantly surprised to note that this angel food cake baked - and stayed - moister than "regular" angel food cake, even days later (it lasted a grand total of 4 days here before being demolished).

That said, the batter is somewhat thicker than your standard angel food recipe, and the top of the pan will be somewhat bumpy... but since that becomes the bottom, nobody will see! Also, being sugar free, the cake will not brown very much, maintaining an angel white appearance. Again, appearance was trumped by taste here, especially when I drowned mine in melted cherry jam (my favourite). FH used homemade strawberry sauce and whipped cream to decorate his and proclaimed it a success, not even realizing it was gluten or sugar free. The dozen egg yolks left over? They became a decadent pair of braided loaves, which will appear on this blog soon!


The best part of all this was that now, I have a cake option to enjoy and share with others no matter what the occasion - I've been asked to make it for Easter this year, and it is a top contender for my wedding cake a few years down the road too!