Category: baking

It is no secret around here that I’m addicted to sweets and pastries.  My ideal mornings always start out with a cup of coffee and a freshly baked pastry.  Luckily there are quite a few amazing bakeries in Seattle that I like to occasionally indulge in and get inspiration from for my own baking adventures.  On the top of that list is Macrina Bakery.  I always try something different whenever I’m there and I’ve yet to find something that I’m disappointed by.  The last time we were there I ordered the buttermilk biscuit which essentially is a really big, super flaky biscuit with a delightful center of jam.  I LOVED it, but one thing that my husband noted when I let him have a bite was that you didn’t get jam in every bite and the combo of the biscuit and the jam was essential.  I agreed and decided that I would try to make something similar but in my version, you would for sure get jam in every bite!

I opened up  my Grand Central Baking Book (another bakery I love!) to find a recipe for their Jammers which was very similar to Macrina’s in that the biscuit part was very large and the jam was only in the center.  I basically just took the biscuit recipe and instead of making the biscuits huge and dense, I made them flatter and bite sized.  I bought my favorite jam and filled each one to the brim and came out with the perfect little Thumbprint Jammers! 

Thumbprint  Jammers – adapted from Grand Central Bakery Jammers

Ingredients
4 cups all purpose flour
3 tablespoons granulated sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup cold unsalted butter
1 1/4 to 1 1/2 cups buttermilk
About 3/4 cup preserves or jam

*side note: this makes A LOT of  Thumbprint Jammers so I recommend cutting this recipe in half if you don’t want a crazy amount.  I think I made about 16-18 with cutting the recipe in half.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.  Lightly grease a baking sheet or line it with parchment paper.

1. Measure the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and baking soda into a bowl with high sides or the bowl of a stand mixer and whisk to combine.
2. Dice the butter into 1/2 inch cubes.   Use your hands or paddle attachment of your stand mixer on low speed to blend the butter into the dry ingredients until the texture of the flour changes from silky to mealy.  There should still be dime-to quarter-size pieces of butter remaining.  If you’re preparing the dough the night before, cover the bowl with plastic wrap and chill overnight, otherwise proceed with the recipe.
3. Make a well in the flour mixture and pour in 1 cup of the buttermilk in one addition.  Gently  mix the dough just until it comes toghether, it will look rough.
4. Scrape the dough from the sides and bottom of the bowl, then add another 1/4 cup buttermilk and mix again to incorporate any floury scraps.  The majority of the dough will come together, on the paddle if you are using a stand mixer.  Stop mixing while there are still visible chunks of butter and floury patches.  The dough should come out of the bowl in 2 to 3 large, messy clumps, leaving only some small scraps and flour around the sides of the bowl.  If the dough is visibly dry and crumbly add up to 1/4 cup more buttermilk, 1 tablespoon at a time, mixing no more than one rotation after each addition.
5. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface.  Use the heels and sides of your palms to gather the dough and gently pat it into an oblong shape 1 inch thick.  It won’t look smooth or particularly cohesive, that’s okay.
6. Using a knife, cut out the sizes of dough that you’d like your jammers to be.  (Grand Central advises using a biscuit cutter but I don’t have one and I wanted mine to be small.)
7. Shape the dough into your biscuit and use your thumb to make an indentaion in the middle of each biscuit.  Try to apply as little pressure as possible to the outside of the biscuit, to avoid smashing the layers, which are the key to flaky jammers.  Fill each indentation with jam and put the jammers on the prepared baking sheet with 1 1/2 inches between them.
8. Bake for 30-35 minutes, rotating the pan halfway through the baking time.  The jammers should be a deep golden brown.  (Note, if you are making the regular size jammers, Grand Central recommends baking for 35 to 40 minutes)
9. Let cool and then enjoy with a fresh pot of coffee! 🙂

My notes about this recipe

• Make sure to handle the dough VERY little.  The first batch I went crazy with making the indentations and the biscuit didn’t come out as fluffy as the second time where I was careful not to handle the dough too much.
• Don’t fill the jam over the top of the indentation like in my picture above.  If it’s not encased in the indentation, it will just overflow and get all over your pan. 
• The Grand Central recipe calls for 1.5 teaspoons of salt but when my first batch came out, I didn’t like how salty the biscuit was so I cut it, by a lot but it’s up to you if you really like the salty/sweet combination. 

The containers that hold my sugar and flour are these Martha Stewart containers that I am obsessed with!  I had a little baking party with a girlfriend of mine and she had these in her kitchen and I immediately knew I needed to have them so the next day I went out and bought one for each of my baking essentials.  It helps so much to have them in these containers and each one comes with it’s own measuring cup which is so handy.  Funny story about the labels – I bake enough to recognize what is in the container just by looking at it, especially the sugars but every time hubs went to look for the sugar, he’d pull out every container that resembled sugar (all purpose flour, whole wheat flour, self rising flour, granulated sugar, powdered sugar – like I said, I bought these containers for everything!) and tried to decipher them.  He bought some waterproof labels and now, nobody gets confused 😉 

I’ve become a way better cook in the past few years but my true love in the kitchen is baking.  I love trying out new recipes so I recently got the Grand Central Baking Book (I love Grand Central Bakery pastries and the recipes in the book are just as fantastic!) and Baked: New Frontiers in Baking.  Both are fabulous but Baked has one of the very best Chocolate Chip cookies recipes that I have ever made.  Trust me when I say I’ve tried a TON of chocolate chip cookie recipes but ever since I made these, I have yet to turn back to any of the other recipes I used to use.  The best part of these is that instead of making the entire batch, I keep the dough refrigerated (it keeps up to 5 days and I keep it in a tupperware container) and every time we want cookies or when we have friends over, I just scoop out however many we want and we have freshly baked cookies in about 13 minutes.  It’s the best!  Scroll down for the recipe!

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Chocolate Chip Cookies from Baked: New Frontiers in Baking
Yield: 24 Cookies (but I like mine small so it makes way more)

Ingredients: 

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspooon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 cup unsalted butter, soft but cool

1 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar

1/2 cup granualted sugar

2 large eggs

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

2 2/3 cups (16 ounces) semisweet chocolate chips

In a large bowl, whisk the flour, salt and baking soda together and set aside.  In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter and sugars together until smooth and creamy.  Scrape down the bowl and add the eggs, one at a time, beating until each is incorporated.  The mixture will look light and fluffy.  Add the vanilla and beat for 5 seconds.

Add half of the flour mixture and mix for 15 seconds.  Add the remaining flour mixture and beat until just incorporated.

Using a spatula or wooden spoon, fold in the chocolate chips.

Cover the bowl tightly and put in the regrigerator for 6 hours.

Preheat the overn to 375 degrees F.  Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

Use an ice cream scoop to scoop out dough in 2 tablespoon-size balls.  Use your hands to shape the dough into perfect balls and place them on the prepared baking sheets, about 1 inch apaprt.  Bake for 12 to 14 minutes, rotating the pans once during the cooking time, until the edges of the cookies are golden brown and the tops just start to darken

Remove the pan from the oven and cool on a wire rack for 5 minutes.  Use a spatula to transfer the indivdual cookes to the rack to cool completely (although they are delicious warm).

The cookies can be stored in an airtight container for up to 3 days.

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There are lots of great recipes in this book and I highly recommend it!  I’ve only made a few but I’m working my way through it to make as many as I can!

The iPad timer app I’m using in that photo above is the Timer+ app