Bake from Scratch November/December 2021

It was a delight to bake in person again at our Southern Baking Retreat! Visit bakefromscratch.com for more information on our baking retreats. HELLO, HOLIDAYS! It’s that delicious time of year when bakers really get to flex their muscles, turning out pies for Thanksgiving, cookies for Christmas, or sufganiyot for Hanukkah. For a baking season this grand, I knew we needed to deliver an equally grand issue. Kicking off this celebratory issue is our guide to baking panettone, the domed Italian loaf that is a quintessential piece of yuletide decadence. Then we hop into a Thanksgiving-focused feature that offers perfectly portable baked goods, from a savory bread wreath to a turtle brownie-pie mash-up. Next, we march into one of my absolute favorite sections: our Cookie + Cake Swap, a sprawling collection of holiday…

RECIPE INDEX BARS AND COOKIES Almond-Pecan Biscotti Cookies 32 Chai Oatmeal Cookies with Apple Cider Cream Cheese Filling 22 Cherry Belgian Biscuits 84 Chocolate Chip Cookies 39 Cream Cheese-Stuffed Red Velvet Cookies 63 Gingerdoodle Sandwich Cookies 33 Gelt Cookie Butter Blossom Cookies 104 Holiday Glitter Sandwich Cookies 11 Iced Gingerbread Cutout Cookies 90 Italian Rainbow Cookies 94 Linzer Cookies 80 Macadamia Nut Bars 41 Red Velvet-Cheesecake Swirl Brownies 64 Sarah Bernhardt Cookies 109 BREADS Fig-Apple Braided Challah 103 Gingerbread Spice Loaf 15 Milk Bread Gibassier 45 Panettone 56 Red Velvet Sweet Rolls 66 Savory Herb Wreath 75 Sufganiyot 102 Sweet Potato Muffins 74 Vanilla Chai Liège Waffles 46 CAKES Chocolate-Almond Olive Oil Cake 99 Chocolate Rugelach Cake 88 Cranberry Biscuit Layer Cake 85 Eggnog Red Velvet Cake 65 Gingerbread Bundt 91 Italian Rainbow Cookie Loaf Cake 95 Peppermint Bark Cheesecake 5 FROSTINGS, FILLINGS, GARNISHES, AND GLAZES Cheesecake Swirl 64 Chocolate Filling 88 Cranberry Filling 85 Cream Cheese Glaze 66 Eggnog Buttercream 65 Fig Filling 104 Hydrated Cranberries 76 Lemon Frosting 33 Molasses Glaze…

HOLIDAY BAKING MUST-HAVES WITH THE HOLIDAYS JUST AROUND THE CORNER, WE’VE ROUNDED UP SOME OF OUR NEW FAVORITE PRODUCTS TO HELP YOU GET THROUGH THE HOLIDAY BAKING SEASON. WHETHER YOU’RE PREPARING TO HOST YOUR FIRST THANKSGIVING OR SWEEP THE HOLIDAY COOKIE SWAP, THESE ITEMS WILL HELP YOU GET IT DONE ALL IN GOOD TASTE. BEAUTIFUL BUNDTS The new Let It Snow Bundt Pan from Nordic Ware serves up just the right amount of holiday cheer and whimsy. With a swirling snowflake design, cakes baked in this pan are gorgeous as is, but dusted with confectioners’ sugar or even drizzled with a sglaze, they’ll truly shine. Available at williams-sonoma.com, $39.95 BAKE AND TAKE This beautifully designed Emma Bridgewater tin will be the highlight of the holiday cookie swap season. The Partridge Deep Rectangular Tin is charmingly adorned…

How did you get started with your macaron business? Shrobana Sengupta: I’ve always really been interested in business and combining that with giving back to the community. In middle school, I started my own handmade card business where I would make greeting cards and donate the proceeds to St. Jude’s charity. Once the [COVID-19] pandemic started, I decided to start blogging and tracking my journey as a baker. I posted a French cookie box for Mother’s Day 2020, and my mom suggested I include macarons. I gave it a shot and got hooked. I continued to practice and perfect them to the point that I was making macarons, like, every week. Soon, friends and family wanted to purchase my macarons, and I thought this would be a great opportunity to start…

Considering its role in everything from custards and pies to cakes and cookies, vanilla might just be the MVP of the baking world. It appears in almost every ingredient list, but it’s also one of the most expensive ingredients in a baker’s pantry. Since its discovery around the 14th century, vanilla has been both elusive and highly coveted. Its rich, floral, and complementary nature gives depth to almost every recipe it’s added to. And although vanilla has become commonplace in baking, its origin is anything but ordinary. The creeping vanilla vine originated in the tropical forests of Mesoamerica, with the pre-Columbian Maya being the first to use vanilla and the Totonac people being the first to cultivate it. For the Totonac people, vanilla beans were used for medicinal and religious purposes.…

My grandmother is proud to say she’s Sicilian, not Italian, an important distinction between her and the rest of the family. As iconic as her apron adorned with the island of Sicily is my mimi’s recipe for white biscotti. You may think of the twice-baked biscotti with that toothsome finish, the kind you dip into your coffee, but these cookies are a different story. “Biscotti” just means “little biscuit,” a petite cookie with any kind of texture or flavor. This cookie is nutty and soft and dissolves with one bite. My grandmother makes these cookies as an act of service, and they pop up at every baby shower, wedding, and gathering we have. We can always count on her white biscotti to show up on Christmas, along with her cuccidati,…