Roscas de Naranjas -- a Pinedo recipe

At Christmas, I was reminded of a Mexican tradition, Día de Los Reyes; in English it is the Three Kings Day or Epiphany.  In my home, it is called Twelfth Night.

In Mexico, it often celebrated by eating a Rosca de Reyes, a King Cake.  This is a sweet bread shaped in a ring and decorated with dried and candied fruit, icing, and sometimes nuts.  

In the Pinedo cookbook on pages 233-4, she has a section labeled as "Roscas" and gives three variations for them.  None are labeled as specifically for de Reyes, and none of the recipes direct us to decorate the bread.  

I wanted to try the first recipe she listed, "Roscas de naranja", for several reasons.  First, the dough is flavored with oranges, while the others are not.  Next, it called for fifteen (15!!!) eggs.  Finally, it contains tequesquite, and I wanted to try it as a leavening agent.  Click here for the previous post with more information on tequesquite.

My Translation

Notice that she specifies using yeast as well as the tequesquite, and that the yeast is not really acting as a leavening agent.  I'm assuming it does a little and that it also adds flavor along with liquid.

I wasn't going to just toss in some dried yeast in powdered form.  Throughout the book, Miss Pinedo appears to be working with yeast in liquid form.  On page 149, she gives directions on how to make a liquid yeast in a crock to be available daily for bread making.  I decided to make a liquid yeast that was proofed before using in the dough.  

I took 1 teaspoon of dried bread yeast and mixed it into 2 cups of warm water, 2 tablespoons sugar, and 1/2 cup flour.  I left it to proof in a warm location for about 2 hours.  I stirred it well before using it in the dough.

Proofed and ready to go

My Redaction

15 eggs

the juice of 2 small oranges (1/4 cup) and the zest of one

1 cup butter, melted

1/2 pound sugar

1 1/2 cups proofed yeast 

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 cup settled tequesquite water

5 1/2 pounds of all purpose flour, with some extra to dust the counter while kneading

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Put eggs, juice, zest, sugar, salt, and tequesquite water into a large bowl or pan.  (I used a 6 quart kettle.)

Mix well.  Add one pound of flour.  Mix well.

Add the butter, stirring while pouring it in so it does not scramble the eggs.  Add the rest of the flour (I added it one pound at a time, mixing each batch in as I went.) and mix well to form a soft, sticky dough.

Put it onto a floured surface and knead until it forms a body that sticks to itself more than your hands, but still is somewhat sticky.

It is ready to shape and bake. 

Nearly enough flour (5 pounds here)

The ball of dough after kneading

My Notes

I wasn't sure what the right temperature was for baking this.  Modern rosca recipes suggest 400 degrees F., so I first set my oven to that.  I took a small piece of dough for a test bake.  I left it in for 13 minutes; that is when it developed a little browning on the outside.

About the size of the small orange

Baked after 13 minutes

Interior needed more time, exterior more browning

The interior looked very moist and I felt it needed more baking time.  The outside should have been browner.  So I lowered the temperature to 375 degrees F for my next test batch.

I took half of the remaining dough and shaped it into a ball.  Once it was on the baking sheet, I poked a hole in the middle with my fingers and started pulling it into a ring shape.

My goal was to get the thickness of the dough reasonably the same all around to help it bake evenly.  The dough had the tendency to pull back to a smaller ring than what I pulled it to.  I got it as best as I could and put it into the oven for 35 minutes.

It was nicely browned and sounded hollow when tapped.  I did not like the cracking on top, which I attribute to how I shaped the ball -- I didn't tuck the dough to make a smooth surface when I prepared to put it on the baking sheet.

I let it cool and then sliced it.  The interior looked damp, almost like it wasn't baked enough, although it had formed a small crumb and there were some bubbles.  The crust was fine; crispy and lightly brown.  The orange flavor came through without being too much.  It might have been better with more salt.  It is not a sweet bread, but considering how much sugar goes on it (icing and/or powdered sugar), I think that is acceptable.  

I wondered if the interior was that moist-looking because of 15 egg yolks and 1 cup of butter.  That seems like a lot of fat for bread.  

I believe the orange juice serves two purposes.  It adds flavor, but probably not as much flavor as the zest, which seemed to be the orange flavor I tasted.  But it is an acid, and I think it would react with the alkaline in the tequesquite water to make bubbles.  Perhaps I needed more tequesquite water or more orange juice to make the bread better.

The other half of the dough was also shaped into a ring.  This time I turned the dough to form a smooth top as I was making the ball.  Then I formed the ring and baked it a 350 degrees F for 45 minutes.

The top didn't crack, so I think I was right about that.  It seemed puffier, too.

But it, too, was disappointing.  The interior was a little more cooked-looking than the previous batch and it had more bubbles.  But it was still dense.  Don't get me wrong; the flavor was good as the orange came through well.  It just didn't seem like bread, or at least not the lighter, fluffy bread I was expecting.

I can't really call this a success.  I will label it as a failure.  We still saved it, though, as it wasn't so bad that I wanted to throw it out.  I sliced it into individual serving pieces and froze most of it.  It was fine to eat when heated or toasted, so I will have a sturdy bread to serve with a soup or stew.  It might do well in a bread pudding some day, too.

So where did it all go wrong?  I don't know for sure, but my sense tells me I didn't have enough tequesquite water (or strong enough water) to make all that dough rise.  I also think I could have kneaded it more.  Or I could have ignored the directions to not let it ferment and let the second batch rise.  And did it really need all those eggs?  One aspect I neglected to consider is that the eggs of yesteryear may have been a lot smaller, so I did not need that many eggs of the large size.  Maybe five would have been better.  That is just a guess.

I was not deterred.  I decided to try another of Miss Pinedo's rosca recipes.  Check back for tomorrow's post to see the results.

Pastel de Cándida, Cándida's Pie -- a Pinedo recipe

It's time for another Pinedo recipe!  This time my sweet tooth was working hard on my thoughts, so I picked a dessert recipe.  I looked through the pie section and chose one that looked intriguing.  It is on pages 181 - 182 and another copy is on page 188.

Cándida's pie.

Boil a kettle cup of sugar and a half of milk: let it boil until the state of cajeta.

           The pies are made with rich dough and after they are cooked, the inside of them is filled with the cajeta, smearing them with fresh cream and sprinkling them with walnuts and almonds ground in the mortar.

         Put the pies in the oven right away to dry.

Cándida's pie.

         Boil a kettle cup of very rich milk with another cup of sugar to the point of cajeta. After cooking, the pie crusts are covered with the milk mixture. They are spread with fresh cream and sprinkled with walnuts and clean almonds broken in the mortar.

         Place the pies in the oven for five to ten minutes to dry and brown.

This recipe has a person's name on it -- and I wish I knew who Cándida was.  But it is interesting, too, to know that cándida also translates to "white", which the pie is when you pour cream over the top, or it translates to "candy", which describes the filling.

To give you fair notice, I failed making this recipe.  In the verdict section below, I will give you my recommendations on how to make it that may not fail.

My Redaction

64 ounces whole milk (too much!)

128 ounces sugar

1 pie crust to cover a 9-inch pie pan (you can do an 8-inch pan, too), pre-baked

Fresh cream, about 1/4 cup

1/4 to 1/2 cup chopped walnuts and almonds.

Don't use all that milk

Boil the milk and sugar together until it gets thick, somewhere between the thread stage (230 degrees F) and the soft ball stage (240 degrees F).  Let cool until spreadable, not runny hot.

Pour the filling in the baked crust.  Spread it around and level the surface.

Pour enough cream over the top to make a thin layer.  Sprinkle with nuts.

Put the pie into the oven to dry it.  I used a warm oven for 20 minutes.

My Notes

Pinedo suggests either a 2-to-1 ratio of sugar to milk (in the first recipe) or a 1-to-1 ratio (in the second recipe).  I decided to use the 2-to-1 ratio.  

I also (foolishly) chose to start with 1/2 gallon of milk, when I should have, more likely, used 2 cups.  I wasn't sure how much the mixture would reduce to during cooking, and I am still not sure what volume a kettle cup holds. 

The idea of cooking to the state of cajeta means to make a thick mixture.  This mixture of only milk and sugar matches the more modern cajeta recipes, which makes a caramel often called dulce de leche.  That is what I set out to do.

I have previously attempted to make a cajeta and was reasonably successful (see this post).  I have read advice online to cook it in an uncovered slow-cooker.  I started my milk and sugar mixture this way.  It barely fit in the slow-cooker, and after 6 hours of it cooking on high, there was no change in the mixture other than the sugar being dissolved and it was a little foamy.  I thought that at this rate, it would take days to get the mixture thick.

In the beginning

After six hours

So I put it in my Dutch oven on the stove, brought it to a boil, and let it slowly boil.  I was surprised when it overflowed the pan.  When hot, the mixture expanded a lot!

Not the Dutch oven but still had issues with it boiling over.

Then I moved half the volume to another pan, brought both pans to a simmer, and let them cook until they reached the soft-ball stage.  I kept checking their temperatures and doing a cold water test, and I wasn't convinced they would thicken well until I got it to the soft-ball stage.

Once spread in the crust, the mixture was tacky but not very sticky to the touch.  

I poured on the cream and decided to cover the whole surface well with the nuts.  I used about an equal mixture of walnuts and almonds.

My oven was heated to warm, and I left the pie in there for 20 minutes.  I could not tell if the cream had dried or browned, but the nuts appeared to have absorbed much of the cream.

I let the pie cool before serving.

The Verdict

There was a lot of leftover filling, which I spread into shallow, foil-lined casserole dishes.  This filling crystallized as it cooled, turning into a candy that was harder than fudge but not truly hard.  I could break it up with a knife into chunks, although sometimes the chunks shattered.  

This did not bode well for the pie filling.  So I was not surprised that its filling was also very firm.  Disappointing, because I expected (well, hoped for) a softer filling.  At least it didn't all flow off the crust when I cut it.

I still ate some of it.  It was tasty but too sweet, really.  The firm filling was too firm, so sometimes I warmed it up in the microwave.  This melted the filling a little and made it more like a pie.  (Careful!  It can burn your mouth!)

I liked the cream on top and I especially liked the nuts, which toned down the sweetness.  Sometimes I poured more cream on top as I was serving it, which also helped tone down the sweetness.  My guest taster loved the pie even with the hard filling, which surprised me.

It has to be declared as a failure, though.  The filling was supposed to be soft.  I expected it to be sweet but not THAT sweet.  Perhaps the 1-to-1 ratio would have been better.

The extra filling candy went to my work and was shared with many people.  One woman, born and raised in Mexico, noted that she has had that candy before -- so I know I am not the only person who has crystallized dulce de leche.  It makes a good candy in small doses.  People commented that they were surprised it was only made of milk and sugar.  It was brown and rich, and made me think it had vanilla in it.  

So how would I fix the filling?  

If I wanted to make the filling from scratch, I would use perhaps 2 cups of milk and 2 to 4 cups of sugar.  This would cook faster and not have such an opportunity to crystallize when cooling.  (Although you wouldn't have the extra candy!)  I'm not sure if I would stop it at the thread stage or take it to the soft-ball stage.  More experimentation is needed.

Or I could buy two cans of sweetened condensed milk and boil them unopened for a few hours while completely submerged in water.  Once they are cooled (in the water), they can be opened.  The internet recommends this, but you do have to be careful to keep the cans submerged.  I have done this in the past, and it makes a good creamy caramel filling.

Or I could buy cans of dulce de leche.  

I would make my choice based on how much of a hurry I was.  Keep in mind this makes a very sweet pie.  The cream does help, and you can pour a thicker layer if you'd like.  You can also choose how much coverage you want with the nuts.  I covered the cream layer completely.  If you want to show the color contrast between the cream and the nuts, use fewer.  That is assuming drying the pie in the oven keeps the cream white.

Officially, a failure, but all was not lost.

Takes 2 and 3: German Honey Cake via Laura Ingalls Wilder

Previously I tried Laura Ingalls Wilder's recipe on German Honey Cake as she reported it from her visits to the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition.  Visit that post by clicking here.

ISBN 0-06-440081-6

It was not successful.  The cake or cookies came out as too hard to eat, and it wasn't until I had them stored in a bag with a damp paper towel for several days did they get reasonably soft enough to bite without too much discomfort.

I speculated that her liquid-to-flour ratio was off.  Comparing her ratio to other recipes I found both in my books and on the internet, I thought she needed to use 1/2 cup of flour instead of two cups.

So I tried the recipe again:  I beat the honey and sugar together for 20 minutes, mixed in the spices, mixed in the baking powder, then hand-stirred in the flour.  I definitely had a batter that I could pour into a well-buttered pan.  Take 2!

After 18 minutes in the oven at 350 degrees F, I saw that the mixture was bubbling (almost bubbling over the edges of the glass dish) but not firm.  But I took it out and let it cool, just to see.  

Right out of the oven.

After cooling.

In the meantime, I made another batch of the (luscious) chocolate frosting, cooking it to 220 degrees F instead of the 230 degrees I did last time, and using more water to start with.  I also used some water to wash the sides of the pan, hoping to avoid sugaring.

Once it had reached temperature (but no threading showed up in the cool water test), I poured it over the mixture in the baking dish.

And then it sank.

Not surprisingly, the chocolate topping sank through the mixture.  What I had was a pan of goo -- spicy, sweet, tasty goo with chocolate syrup underneath -- but goo, nonetheless.  Failure.

Clearly 1/2 cup of flour was not enough to produce anything that resembled a cake or cookies.  My speculation was way off!  I let it cool completely and thought about what to do next.

Even though I could reasonably expect to separate most of the goo from the chocolate syrup, I decided it wasn't worth it.  The honey mixture's water content was changed from when I started Take 2, so I chose to just mix in more flour to the combined goo and syrup to see if I could get it to something that resembled a cake.

Tasty goo.

Take 3!  I stirred in 1/2 cup of flour by hand, a little at a time.  At that stage, the goo had turned into something that resembled a cake batter -- thicker but not too thick.  It was still soft enough to spread into a greased pan.  This time I chose a wide pan with short sides and baked it in the toaster oven at 350 degrees.

Goo with flour added.

In a wide, short pan.

It, too, bubbled up and got puffy.  It went over the sides of the pan.  After 15 minutes, I pulled it out (and cleaned the oven).  It cooled.

A mess, but not difficult to clean.

The result was dubbed "almost a cookie."  It was still sweet, spicy, and had a wonderful chocolate flavor throughout.  But it wasn't quite a cookie, more like a soft candy:  it held its shape, was sticky but not to everything, and had some bite resistance.  It also had an underlying taste of not-quite-cooked flour to it.  

It reminds me of the molasses lace cookies I've made before.

It held its shape!

Yet another failure.  However, I feel that I was closer to success!  I need to try Ms. Wilder's recipe again, and perhaps the chocolate topping recipe, too.

Stay tuned for the next installment of "Trying to Get It Right!".

German Honey Cake via Laura Ingalls Wilder

 I was reading about California history in the early 1900s, and I came across this book:

ISBN 0-06-440081-6

It is a collection of letters from Laura Ingalls Wilder (some are written by her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane) to her husband, Almanzo Wilder.  Ms. Wilder traveled from her home in the Ozarks to visit Rose and her husband, Gillette Lane, in 1915.  While there, Ms. Wilder visited the Panama-Pacific International Exposition.  When she returned home, she wrote an article about it for the Missouri Ruralist in November 1915.  

Click here to view a image of the first page of the article.

And click here to see a list of the articles she wrote.

And click here to see the entire article. This is a PDF so look at pages 20 - 22.  

Thank you to pioneergirl.com for compiling all this information!

In it, she discussed the modern upgrades for food preparation as well as imported foods she saw and tasted in the Food Products Building.  It made her reflective, in that the imported items from far away places were intriguing, but then she realized that the wheat and other farm products she was familiar with were also being exported to those exotic locations. 

She noticed, too, for example, that she had always seeded and cleaned raisins by hand, but she saw machines that seeded, steam-cleaned, and packaged raisins much faster than she had thought possible.

Ms. Wilder also included recipes from some of the booths she visited, which were mostly breads from various cultures.  The one that caught my attention was on page 123.

German Honey Cake

One cup honey, molasses, or syrup; 1/2 cup sugar, 2 cups flour, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, 1 teaspoon ginger, 1 teaspoon cloves, 2 teaspoons baking powder.  Beat honey and sugar 20 minutes, then add the spices, the baking powder, and lastly the flour.  Pour into well-buttered baking sheets and bake 15 minutes in a moderate oven.  Cover with chocolate icing and cut in squares.

My Notes

Notice this makes cookie or cake bars, but does not require any eggs or added fats, like butter.  It struck me as an unusual recipe, so I started looking around the internet for more information.  

What I learned was that this recipe, given to us in 1915, had a connection to recipes made in Germany 400 years ago.  This blog, Researching Food History, has a post on Lebkuchen that uses almost the same ingredients.  It does not have baking powder, as that hadn't been invented yet.  I looked around at some of my cookbooks and found a similar recipe that calls for potash as a leavening.  But in the 1500s recipe, there was no leavening at all.  

I knew I had to try Ms. Wilder's recipe.

As per the instructions, I beat the honey and sugar together for 20 minutes, using the lowest speed on my mixer.  

Before mixing

After 20 minutes of mixing

It appeared that the long mixing time gave the sugar a chance to dissolve somewhat into the moisture of the honey.

Then I mixed in the spices with just a few turns of the beater, and then the baking powder.  Finally, I put in the flour and mixed it just enough to make a stiff dough.  

With spices and baking powder.

The dough

Note that I did not get a batter that could "pour" into well-buttered baking sheet.  It was a very stiff dough.  I buttered my hands and pushed it around the 10 inch by 15 inch baking sheet until it was a thin layer that reached all the way to the edges.

It took a lot of pushing!

Then I baked it at 350 degrees F for 15 minutes.  

It looks great!

When it came out of the oven, it cooled while I made the chocolate glaze, using the recipe from this site.

Just add water.

1 cup sugar

2 Tablespoons (1 ounce) baking chocolate, chopped

1/4 teaspoon vanilla 

a little water

Boil it until it threads.  Pour over cake.  Let it sit in a warm oven to get a nice sheen.

My Notes

Thread stage is 215 to 235 degrees F.  

I wasn't sure what "a little water" was, so I put in just enough to melt the sugar and start the cooking process.  It didn't take long to get to 230 degrees, which is when I poured it on the honey cake, spread it, and then put it in the still warm oven for about 8 minutes.

Just a splash of water.  Not enough.

More water, to make it flow.

At about 230 degrees

The Verdict

It looked good, despite the poor job I did of making the glaze.  You can see that the glaze sugared, and did not spread easily.  I probably should have used more water to get it started, and then only cooked it to 215 or 220 degrees F.  But the glaze stuck to the honey cake, so I was happy with that.

Now for the cake.

Well, frankly, it was pretty hard.  I had to really work to cut a square out of the corner for a taste test.  Once it was out, it was hard to bite into.  Not impossible, but certainly challenging.

A good picture but not a good eat.

But I could bite it, so I can report on the flavor.  The spices came through!  They were warming and balanced, and strong enough to make the little cake square interesting without being too strong.  My guest taster described it as "zesty!"  The chocolate glaze was a good choice -- I could taste the chocolate but it mixed with the spices for a good blend.  My guest taster said, "You can certainly taste the chocolate, but the spices, too."

But oh, it was so hard.  I wondered if her recipe called for too much flour.  If it was supposed to be a batter I could pour, then too much flour would be the reason it was so stiff.  Still, I had seen other recipes around the internet that talked about "pounding the dough into the pan."

Another thought I had was how the recipes emphasized letting the baked cake or cookies "age" for a day or two, to let the flavors develop.  I wondered if mine would soften by absorbing moisture from the air.  Then, perhaps, I could cut it.

So I waited.  The next day, it was a little softer:  easier to cut and to bite, but still too hard to make me happy.  The flavors seemed better developed, but I was not sure.  The second day of sitting out on the counter really showed very little change.  It was, perhaps, a tiny bit softer.  It was stressful on my jaw to bite into it.

I've given this a lot of thought, and I compared Ms. Wilder's recipe to others I've seen that were similar.  My conclusion is that her recipe calls for too much flour.  One recipe has a ratio of 2 parts honey and sugar syrup to 1 part flour, so Ms. Wilder's recipe should call for 1/2 cup flour instead of 2 cups.  That should make a batter than can spread.

I want to try that.  If I can, I will, and it will be on a future post.  

I can't really call it a success, although the chocolate frosting tastes great with the spices.  If only the cake was softer!  

Better luck next time.  The spices do make my kitchen smell good.