Cinnamon Brown Sugar Pull-Apart Bread

Ask my colleagues what I did this weekend, and they'll tell you what I told them: relax, relax, relax.

And truly, that's what I intended to do. It's been an intense month at work, and I've been looking forward to this labor-day-without-weddings weekend for a long time. I had my sites set on the couch, a couple of movies downloaded on my ipad, and a bag of fantastic coffee beans ready for some pour-over action.

Turns out, I'm not so good at relaxing in the traditional sense. Sitting on the couch too long makes me twitch. I start poking around at the tomatoes on the counter, seeing if any is particularly soft and needs cutting. The second peaches in the fridge call my name and I'm up, flipping through cookbooks for that brown-butter cobbler recipe I've been meaning to try. And I can't even blame it all on the last glorious produce of summer. Partly, I'm just a mad woman. At 8 am I'm reading The Kitchn on my ipad, and at 8:15 I'm in the kitchen, mixing up dough.

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I've been eyeing a version of this loaf for over a year. Leite's Culinaria first posted a recipe for lemon pull-apart bread by Flo Braker, she of best tea cookies on the planet-fame. Those cookies are so good, I'll try pretty much any other recipe she writes. Lemon pull-apart loaf looked like cinnamon buns, minus the cinnamon, minus the bun, if you know what I mean. Doesn't that sound delicious and totally self-explanatory? Lemme try again: it's cinnamon bun dough, cut into squares, brushed with melted butter, sprinkled with lemon delicious stuff, and stacked into a loaf pan. As it bakes, the strips rise up and fan out, so the edges crisp and the sugar and butter caramelize. Now then: delicious, am I right?

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I made the loaf a couple weeks ago, and I added some chopped rosemary to the lemon-sugar mixture. Definitely a winner.

But then I made it again, and this time, I added a bit of cinnamon. Lemon and cinnamon work together to make fruit crisps sing; I figured they'd make a great pair in this bread.

Spoiler alert: Not so much. The lemon-cinnamon bread was 100% mediocre. 

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Turns out that what I really craved was the old faithful, cinnamon pull-apart bread. So on try #3, that's what I made.

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It's every bit as good as it should be, and, if you can believe this to possibly be the case, it doesn't even need the cream cheese frosting. Not that that should stop you.

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Cinnamon Brown Sugar Pull Apart Bread or Lemon-Rosemary Pull-Apart BreadAdapted from Leite's Culinaria

For the dough: 2 3/4 cups (12 1/4 ounces) all-purpose flour 1/4 cup (1 3/4 ounces) granulated sugar 2 1/4 teaspoons (1 packet) instant yeast 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/3 cup whole milk 4 tablespoons (2 ounces) unsalted butter 1/4 cup water 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract 2 large eggs

Pick your filling...

For lemon filling: 1/2 cup (3 1/2 ounces) granulated sugar 3 tablespoons finely grated lemon zest (from 2 to 3 lemons, preferably organic) 1 tablespoons finely grated orange zest, preferably organic 2 tablespoons (1 ounce) unsalted butter, melted

For cinnamon-brown sugar filling: 1/2 cup brown sugar 2 tablespoons cinnamon 2 tablespoons (1 ounce) salted butter, melted

For the cream cheese frosting: 3 ounces cream cheese, softened 1/3 cup (1 1/4 ounces) confectioners’ sugar 1 tablespoon whole milk 1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice, only if using lemon filling

Make the sweet dough:Stir together 2 cups (9 ounces) of the flour, sugar, yeast, and salt in the bowl of a stand mixer. In a small saucepan, heat the milk and butter over low heat just until the butter is melted. (You can also do this in a pyrex bowl in the microwave; the mixture needed about 1 minute in mine.) Remove from the heat, add the water, and set aside until warm, about 1 minute. Add the vanilla extract.

Pour the milk mixture over the flour-yeast mixture and mix on low speed until the dry ingredients are evenly moistened. With the mixer still on low speed, add the eggs, 1 at a time, mixing just until incorporated after each addition. Stop the mixer, add 1/2 cup (2 1/4 ounces) flour, and resume mixing on low speed until the dough is smooth, 30 to 45 seconds. Add 2 more tablespoons flour and mix on medium speed until the dough is smooth, soft, and slightly sticky, about 45 seconds.

Sprinkle a work surface with 1 tablespoon flour and turn the dough onto the flour. Knead gently until the dough is smooth and no longer sticky, about 1 minute, adding an additional 1 to 2 tablespoons flour only if the dough is unworkably sticky. Place the dough in a large bowl, cover the bowl tightly with plastic wrap, and let the dough rise in a warm place (about 70°F) until doubled in size, 45 to 60 minutes. Press the dough gently with a fingertip. If the indentation remains, the dough is ready for the next step.

Make the filling: While the dough is rising, mix together in a small bowl either the sugar, lemon zest, and orange zest, or the cinnamon and brown sugar. Set aside.

Assemble and bake the cake: Adjust the oven rack to the center position and preheat the oven to 350°F. Line a 9-by-5-by-3-inch loaf pan with parchment using this awesome trick from Alice Medrich: wrap the outside of the pan as if you were wrapping a gift, then take the folded parchment and ease it into the pan. Brilliant!

On a lightly floured work surface, roll out the dough into a 20-by-12-inch rectangle. Cut the dough crosswise into 5 strips, each about 12 by 4 inches. (A pizza cutter is helpful here.) Using a pastry brush, spread the melted butter generously over each strip of dough. Sprinkle 1 1/2 tablespoons of the filling over each rectangle. Then stack the 5 rectangles on top of each other. Work carefully when adding the crumbly zest filling, or it will fall off when you have to lift the stacked pastry later.

Slice crosswise through the 5-layer stack to create 6 equal strips, each about 4 by 2 inches. Fit these layered strips into the prepared loaf pan, cut edges up and side by side. (Flo Braker recommends fitting the pieces widthwise in the pan, which creates a taller loaf with lots of room on either side. I opted to stack them widthwise, which was quite tight but rose into a shape I liked more. Your choice.) Loosely cover the pan with plastic wrap and let the dough rise in a warm place (70 °F) until puffy and almost doubled in size, 30 to 50 minutes.  Bake the coffee cake until the top is golden brown, 30 to 35 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack and let cool in the pan for 10 to 15 minutes, then remove from the pan.

Frost the cake (optional): Combine cream cheese and sugar, and mash/whisk with a fork until fully incorporated. Add milk (and lemon juice, if making lemon bread), and mix vigorously with fork or electric mixer until very smooth. Set cake on the sheet of parchment used for baking, and drizzle with glaze using a fork or brush using a pastry brush. Serve warm.

Word to the wise: day-old slices of this bread could use a spin in the toaster, but boy are they amazing post-toast.

Roasted Figs with Turbinado Sugar

Next week is Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year. We'll have a full house, a fuller fridge, and a freezer stuffed so tight that eeek, please don't open it too quickly. The lamb is cooked, frozen, and ready to go. (Want to make the one we made? It's the best lamb ever and I shared the recipe with The Forward so you can make it, too. Go right ahead.) I also froze two soups -- one's a triple garlic soup from Melissa Clark; the other has teeny, tiny meatballs suspended in a sour, salty broth. It's insanely delicious. I'm hoping to share it with you early next week.

And what about dessert? Well: I've got one last pint of fresh blueberries left in my fridge. wouldn't my guests just love to be served this genius fresh blueberry tart after the big feast? And I've somehow managed to save a handful of the beautiful apricots I got from Randy a couple weeks back. They still look perfect. I wonder if I should work them into some sort of show-stopping finale for the new year?

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Maybe not. Let's face it: everyone wants honey cake. Those who don't want honey cake just want apple cake. All the excitement about apricots and blueberries is so last month, I guess.

Apple cake and honey cake are great, don't get me wrong. In fact, last year, I smushed the two together (is that turning into a habit?) and gave you a pretty stellar Apples and Honey Cake. That's the recipe I'll be making again for our new year dinner.

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But I'll also be making these roast figs, to serve alongside that old standby of a cake. You should too -- if only to appease those of us who get sad at the thought of blueberries, strawberries, apricots, blackberries, raspberries, and peaches being replaced by just apples. Apples and honey are great, but summer doesn't last forever. It's worth celebrating it while you can.

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The original recipe is simple: figs, marsala, turbinado sugar. But if you don't have marsala, you can use madeira, brandy, or even some red wine. Not the same, but equally delicious. Between you and me, I liked madeira best. (If you use red wine, may I suggest Melissa Clark's Red Wine Honey Cake as an accompaniment?) When figs hang out in a hot oven with just the right amount of alcohol and sugar, their flesh gets soft and sticky, maybe a bit caramelized, and wholly irresistible. Set them next to a slice of honey cake, and you can have summer and fall in one bite.

Roasted Figs with Turbinado SugarAdapted from Nigel Slater's Ripe Serves 4 as a small dessert or component thereof

Slater calls for marsala in his original recipe. I liked that combination a lot, but between you and me, I liked madeira -- another fortified wine -- even more. If you don't have either, go ahead and use brandy or straight-up red wine.

8 figs 1/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon marsala, madeira, brandy, or red wine 2 tablespoons turbinado sugar (3 tablespoons if using dry marsala or red wine) Heavy cream for serving, optional

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Remove the fig stems. Slice figs one of two ways: either halve them lengthwise, or slice an X about halfway through the length of the fig, and fan the quarters open.

Place figs in a baking dish. Drizzle the marsala over the figs and sprinkle the sugar overtop. Bake for 25-30 minutes, until figs are very tender and their tops have caramelized slightly.

Divide figs among serving bowls and top each with a small spoonful of the now very-reduced cooking liquid. Top with a spoonful or two of cream, if desired. Serve immediately.

Single-Crust Plum Pie

I'm here to put a stake in the ground: bottom crust is not necessary. Buried under a pile of juicy summer fruit, it's only a matter of time before the crust succumbs to its inevitable, soggy fate. Purists will tell you that a pie without a bottom crust is not a pie at all, and they will soldier on, pre-baking the thing, brushing it with egg, saying a special prayer before they fill it with juice. I've done that a lot, and I'm sure I'll do it again. (Apple pie season is around the corner, gulp.) But for now, I just turn to Nigel Slater, the wonderful British food writer and cookbook author, who says with an air of authoritativeness and nonchalance that we should skip the bottom crust entirely.

That's right: one crust, laid flat over summer's juiciest, sweetest plums. It's a genius recipe, really, because it takes all the anxiety out of making such a pie. You know, that thing where you par-bake the bottom crust and it shrinks away from the sides of your pan, banishing all hopes for an elegantly-shaped pie. Or that other thing where you take your pie out of the oven and anxiously count the minutes before people are eating it, for fear that if they take too long on their main course, they'll definitely be eating mush for dessert. One-crust pies do away with those things.

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As soon as you embark on making a pie that's just got a top crust, you really can make that crust however you see fit. Nigel Slater adds an egg to his crust, nudging its texture ever so slightly toward cake. The result is billowy and light, still short like pie crust but less prone to tearing or crumbling. Its as unfussy as all summer recipes should be.

The recipe comes from Ripe, Slater's homage to his fruit patch and the authoritative guide to using your summer produce. Ripe is organized by fruit, with dedicated chapters helping you work your way through damsons, elderberries (what, you don't have elderberries? For shame!) and all the usual suspects, too. He offers both savory and sweet ideas in each chapter, and I've already got several other recipes flagged for immediate attention. (Can you say blackberry semifreddo?) But this weekend, I made pie.

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The pie calls for quartered plums, but it also calls for the juiciest plums you can find. In my case, those plums were too juicy to be quartered. I cut into them with a paring knife, then snipped off chunks until most of what remained was pit. I then supplemented with nectarines, because I didn't have quite enough plums to swing a full pie. Many of my plums became mush, but so be it: August plum-cutting isn't a precise science. Fret not: your juiciest, least-cooperative plums have found their delicious destiny.

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Single-Crust Plum PieAdapted slightly from Nigel Slater's Ripe

 7 tablespoons butter 1/2 cup sugar 1 egg, lightly beaten 1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour 1/2 teaspoon baking powder 1/4 teaspoon coarse or flaky salt a bit of milk, for brushing crust 

2 pounds ripe, juicy plums (or a mix of plums and peaches/nectarines) 2 tablespoons sugar 1/8 teaspoon cinnamon (though I substituted galangal, and if you have that lying around, the combination is wonderful)

Cream the butter and sugar in a stand mixer or with an electric beater until light and fluffy, about 1 minute.

Mix in the lightly beaten egg, then gently add the flour and baking powder and mix on low speed until no streaks of flour remain. Remove dough from the mixing bowl and roll into a ball on a heavily floured work surface. Wrap in wax or parchment paper and refrigerate for about 20 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Cut the ripe plums in half and remove their stones. Cut the fruit into whatever large pieces you can manage, then toss with the sugar and cinnamon and put into a lightly buttered pie dish.

Roll out the pastry on a floured board into a disk about 1 inch wider than the width of your pie dish, then fold in half or drape over the rolling pin and lift carefully on to the pie. There will be a little left over, and there may be a few cracks. No problem: The crust is very short, so tears are okay. If they stress you out, go ahead and patch them up. Some of the juice will probably erupt through the crust as it cooks, so we're not aiming for perfection here.

Brush the pastry lightly with milk and bake for 40-50 minutes. The pastry should be pale-biscuit coloured. Dust with sugar and serve warm with vanilla ice cream.

Cashew Cream with Coconut, Mango, and Lime

Back when I first moved to DC, I joined a book group that was more wine and gossip than it was book discussions. It eventually disbanded, and since then, I've listened with eager wistfulness as others describe their book group meetings. People talk of long, wine-fueled discussions about Camus and Jane Austen. A friend of our flies into DC every quarter to meet up with some old Oxford buddies and read sections of Plato's Republic. (I am not kidding.) And  just last week, the director of a non-profit of which I'm a board member was telling me that his book group hosts dramatic play readings. I'm missing out!

But the time I was most jealous of a book group was when my friend Rachel told me that at her last meeting, they served this for dessert: a big platter of cashew-scented mousse, topped with fresh figs and gratings of chocolate. (I think they may have swapped in strawberries.) I'm sorry, is it not painfully obvious that I am dying to be in a book club, for, you know, the book discussions and the food?? In other news: if anyone else is bookclubless and wants to start one up, give a shout. I'm on the market.

Back at home, I decided that if I can't have the book club, at least I can have the cashew cream. So can you.

This sounds like a bit of an out-there recipe, I know. But you'll have to trust me that it's easier than it sounds. Equally important: it is amazing.

To answer your questions in order:

It doesn't sound easy. Oh, but it is. There's no cooking or baking involved, you need only one appliance, and you can make it well in advance.

What on earth is cashew cream? It's a mousse that's made from soaked ground cashews. It's light and creamy and best of all, it's vegan (unless you don't want it to be). But still really delicious, says this butter lover.

I don't have coconut/mango/lime in the house. No problem! Cashew cream goes really well with lots of things. You can top it with fresh strawberries or raspberries and grated dark chocolate. Or try blueberries and a drizzle of maple syrup. It's a bit of a blank slate, ready to play in the sandbox with whatever toppings you have on hand. The "summer means unfussy" mantra continues.

Now, the question I have for you: do you think cashew cream would be good as a component to a savory dish? I'm thinking yes, but I haven't yet had the courage to try it out.

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When the weather is hot and sticky and you can't imagine even breezing past that oven, cashew cream has you covered. I figure if I bring this to the Plato book club, they'll never be able to turn me away.

Cashew Cream with Coconut, Mango, and LimeAdapted from The Kitchn's recipe Serves 4-6

1 1/2 cups raw, unsalted cashews scant one cup water or milk 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 1/4 teaspoon salt scant 1/3 cup sugar or honey 1 heaping tablespoon of coconut oil or olive oil 2 mangos, peeled and cut into slices 1/3 cup unsweetened, large coconut shreds, lightly toasted (I really like the Trader Joe's coconut chips for this - no need to toast them) zest of one lime big shavings of white chocolate, optional

Put cashews in a large bowl, cover with water, and soak for 6 hours or overnight. Strain the soaked cashews, and put them in a blender or food processor with the scant cup water or milk, vanilla, salt, sugar or honey, and oil. Blend for about 2 minutes at high speed, until completely smooth. Don't shortchange the blending process; you want the cashew cream to be smooth and silky, without any coarse bits left. Taste and add more sugar or salt as needed.

To serve, spread cashew cream onto the base of a pretty platter or bowl. Arrange the fruit and coconut chips on top of the cashew cream, and finish with chocolate shavings and lime zest. Serve chilled or at room temperature.