Peppermint Crunch Bark

Another one of my favorite sources of recipes is the King Arthur Flour website. I also enjoy looking at their catalog and drool over all the fancy ingredients and kitchen gadgets.

The Peppermint Crunch Bark recipe was very easy. Basically, melt dark chocolate, pour, wait, melt white chocolate, pour on top of dark chocolate and sprinkle crushed candy canes. However, the tricky part was the timing, which was not described in detail in the recipe. My timing wasn't quite right and half of the bark separated into white chocolate and dark chocolate.

After a few more tries, this peppermint crunch bark recipe could potentially be a keeper for my annual Christmas treat ensemble. It is tasty and very pretty to look at.

Pani Popo Samoan Coconut Buns

I love getting newsletters from the King Arthur Flour Company, especially when they come with bread recipes.

The online recipe for Pani Popo could probably use a bit more details, but the blog version has some helpful illustrations.

Here are some modifications I made:

1. 1 cup of warmed whole milk was used instead of water and dry milk. First I dissolved the instant yeast in a small amount (~3 tbs) of warm water and added to warm milk. Then I added the yeast mixture to the rest of the dough ingredients.
2. I am not sure if I used 3.5 cups of flour or 4 cups. Somehow I had trouble counting to 7 (with 1/2 cup each). The batter was very wet after kneading, so I added another 1/2 cup of flour assuming that I didn't count right to begin with.
3. Melted butter was left out from the dough... saw the butter in the microwave hours later. Ooops!
4. Coconut milk was used instead of water and coconut milk powder.
5. The buns were baked for approximately 24 minutes.

I must have had lots on my mind to have so many mess ups, but the end result was pretty and tasty. Having left out that 4 tablespoons of butter, I convinced myself that it was ok to eat another bun right before bedtime.

This coconut bun would be a fabulous breakfast or brunch item if some rising steps can be done overnight. More experiments on the way, with butter included.

Pumpernickel Bread

I don't eat pumpernickel bread often, so I can't say how this one is compared to others except that this bread is tasty! Even better when it was in the Reuben Sandwich form.

Like other bread mixes I've tried from King Arthur Flour, the only additional ingredients required were warm water and melted butter. When I took the bread out of my Breadman machine, the crust was nice and crunchy and the inside was soft and had a very pleasant sweet taste. The spacing and the chew were just the way I like it!

King Arthur

My inbox mysterious got newsletters from King Arthur Flour's website. I love it! While I am not that big of a bread eater, I love making bread. I ordered three bread mixes from their website and tried the golden potato yeast bread on my breadman machine yesterday.

I didn't have to do much monitoring on my machine with this mix. The only additional ingredients were warm water and 2 tablespoons of soft butter. The bread rose beautifully and baked well. I did not recall the taste of other potato breads in the past, so I cannot really say whether this is a good bread or not. The texture was very nice and the aroma was wonderful during baking. Moist, good chew and a pretty thin crust. I personally would prefer to have this bread to be sweeter, but I in general like anything sweeter. At $5.95 plus Tax a loaf, it is a bit expensive.